SID 

31  1 


IRLF 


OF  THE 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 

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Class 


THE    PROBLEM    OF    THINGS    IN 
THEMSELVES 


Diflsr  rtaitmt  by 
DURANT    DRAKE 


SUBMITTED  IN  PARTIAL  FULFILMENT  OF  THE  REQUIREMENTS  FOR  THE 

DEGREE  OF  DOCTOR  OF  PHILOSOPHY   IN  THE  FACULTY  OF 

PHILOSOPHY,    COLUMBIA     UNIVERSITY. 


THE     PROBLEM    OF    THINGS    IN 
THEMSELVES 


Diasrrtatinn  bg 
DURANT    DRAKE 


SUBMITTED  IN   PARTIAL  FULFILMENT  OF  THE   REQUIREMENTS   FOR  THE 

DEGREE  OF  DOCTOR  OF  PHILOSOPHY   IN   THE  FACULTY  OF 

PHILOSOPHY,    COLUMBIA     UNIVERSITY. 


BOSTON 

PRESS     OF    GEO.     H.     ELLIS     CO 
1911 


i  >  I 
D? 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  THINGS  IN  THEMSELVES 

INTRODUCTORY 

By  the  'problem  of  things  in  themselves'  I  mean  simply  the 
problem  as  to  the  existence  and  nature  of  things  as  they  are  for 
themselves,  independently  of  a  perceiver.  It  is  a  problem  be- 
cause, in  the  first  place,  the  very  existence  of  things  indepen- 
dently of  a  perceiver  (or,  outside  of  experience,  human  and  super- 
human) has  been  denied  by  some,  and  seems  to  demand  argu- 
ment ;  and  in  the  second  place,  because  those  who  believe  in  their 
existence  have  ascribed  to  them,  as  they  exist  outside  of  our  ex- 
perience, all  sorts  of  varying  natures.  The  term  'things  in  them- 
selves' does  not  rightly  connote  an  existence  of  a  different  sort 
from  that  which  the  data  of  our  experience  have,  or  from  that 
which  we  naturally  ascribe  to  unperceived  things.  That  is  a 
matter  for  argument,  one  way  or  the  other.  The  table-as-it- 
exists-for-itself-when-no-one-sees-it  may  have,  as  we  naively 
suppose  it  to  have,  the  same  qualities  which  it  has  as  a  datum  of 
my  experience — brownness,  smoothness,  etc.  But  even  so,  has  it 
not  other,  wnperceived  qualities?  Would  an  analysis  of  the 
perception-datum  exhaust  the  analysis  of  the  thing  as  it  exists 
for  itself? 

When  we  study  the  mechanism  of  perception  new  light  is  thrown 
on  the  matter.  We  discover  that  some,  at  least,  of  the  qualities 
of  our  perception-data  seem  to  be  dependent  on  the  nature  of  our 
organisms  and  to  vary  with  them.  How  then  can  they  be  quali- 
ties of  the  things  out  there  beyond  our  organisms?  Do  things 
have  in  themselves  some  but  not  all  of  the  qualities  they  have  in 
our  experience? 

Here  are  two  possibilities:  namely,  that  things  have  in  them- 
selves more  qualities,  or  that  they  have  fewer  qualities,  than 
can  be  found  in  our  perceptions  of  them.  A  third  possibility  is 
that  they  have  none  of  the  qualities  of  our  perceptions  of  them, 
but  other,  different  qualities;  and  that  their  correspondence  with 
our  perceptions  is  a  merely  formal  one — a  certain  definite  quality 


236759 


of  the  thing  corresponding  to  a  certain  definite  quality  of  the 
perception,  etc. 

But  when  one  has  gone  so  far  a  fourth  possibility  is  likely  to 
suggest  itself — namely,  that  things  have  no  existence  at  all  in 
themselves,  and  that  all  that  exists  is  just  our  evanescent  per- 
ception-data, plus  such  other  data  as  thoughts,  wishes,  and  feel- 
ings— data  which  together  make  up  what  is  commonly  called  a 
human  consciousness;  and  then,  other  similar  consciousnesses,  and 
perhaps  superhuman  consciousnesses. 

The  history  of  thought  is  full  of  such  varying  attitudes  toward 
the  existence  and  nature  of  things  in  themselves,  and  we  can  do 
no  more  than  glance  at  a  few  of  the  better  known  views  in  prefac- 
ing our  positive  argument. 

The  first  recorded  distinction  between  things  as  experienced 
and  things  in  themselves  was  made  by  Democritus.  The  atoms 
which  made  up  his  universe  had  various  sizes  and  shapes,  but  not 
color  or  smoothness  or  any  of  the  so-called  secondary  qualities; 
these  qualities  being  produced  in  us  by  the  variations  in  size  and 
shape.  This  doctrine  reappeared  in  Epicurus  and  Lucretius. 
But  meanwhile,  by  Protagoras  and  the  Sceptics,  the  relativity 
of  all  perceptual  qualities  had  been  asserted,  with  a  consequent 
complete  skepticism  as  to  things  in  themselves. 

Plato  and  Aristotle  swung  thought  in  other  directions,  and 
not  until  the  time  of  Descartes  and  Hobbes  was  the  distinction 
reasserted.  Both  of  these  thinkers  stripped  matter  of  the  second- 
ary qualities.  Hobbes  actually  anticipated  the  modern  view  of 
things  by  declaring:  "All  the  qualities  called  sensible  are,  in  the 
object  that  causeth  them,  but  so  many  motions  of  the  matter 
by  which  it  presseth  on  our  organs  diversely." 

Locke  kept  to  this  distinction.  But  again  reflection  moved 
on  to  a  complete  skepticism  as  to  things  in  themselves.  Berkeley 
insisted  that  the  primary  qualities — extension,  shape,  motion — 
are  just  as  truly  qualities  of  our  experience  as  the  secondary  quali- 
ties; and  that  we  have  no  reason  to  believe  in  the  existence  of 
'things'  at  all  beyond  that  experience.  On  the  contrary,  what 
exists  beyond  our  fragmentary  experience  is — the  mind  of  God, 
causing  our  experiences  to  appear  in  their  definite  and  well-known 
order  in  our  minds.  Hume  was  as  skeptical  of  a  Divine  Mind 
in  the  place  of  Things  as  he  was  of  the  Things  themselves.  He 


agreed  with  Berkeley  that  our  knowledge  is  limited  to  our  ex- 
perience; as  to  whether  things  exist  beyond  our  experience  we 
cannot  know.  This  was  likewise  the  attitude  of  Mill,  who  showed 
that  all  our  physical  knowledge  can  be  interpreted  as  a  knowledge 
of  possible  sensations,  and  their  order;  we  have  no  way  of  getting 
beyond  that  sort  of  knowledge  to  a  knowledge  of  things  in  them- 
selves, if  there  be  any  such  things. 

Meanwhile  Spinoza,  impressed  by  the  empirical  concomitance 
of  conscious-events  with  brain-events,  a  relation  mysterious  and 
unexplained,  sought  to  solve  this  particular  mystery  by  attribut- 
ing it  to  all  reality.  The  universal  'substance'  has  throughout 
an  infinite  number  of  'attributes/  of  which  extension  and  thought 
are  two.  What  exists  outside  of  our  experience  has  thus  the  ma- 
terial qualities,  but  also  mental  qualities.  They  are  but  two  ways 
in  which  we  apprehend  the  One  Substance. 

Leibniz,  on  the  contrary,  held  that  the  material  properties 
of  things  exist  only  as  our  'confused  perception'  of  them;  in 
themselves  they  have  not  even  extension.  What  exists  in  them  is 
a  dim  swooning  life  akin  to  our  mental  life  only  lower  in  the  scale. 
He  may  be  called  the  first  panpsychist'. 

Kant  held  that  all  the  qualities  and  forms  of  our  experience, 
even  space  and  time,  are  the  result  of  our  own  natures;  and  that 
we  only  know  of  things  outside  of  experience  that  they  exist. 
They  are  causes  which  cooperate  with  our  natures  to  produce 
experience,  and  are  therefore  presumably  very  different  from 
experience;  they  are  a  mysterious  and  unknowable  sort  of  reality. 
They  are  noumena,  as  contrasted  with"  phenomena.  The  influence 
of  this  point  of  view  is  discernible  in  many  quarters  since  Kant's 
time.  These  mysterious  things-in-themselves  form,  for  instance, 
the  capstone  of  Spencer's  philosophy,  being  there  capitalized  into 
the  Unknowable. 

They  were,  however,  only  a  sort  of  extraneous  appendage  to 
the  Kantian  philosophy  (which  was  essentially  an  analysis  of  ex- 
perience), and  were  thrown  overboard  posthaste  by  his  succes- 
sors. The  German  transcendental  philosophy  and  its  successors  in 
England  and  America  hold  that  all  reality  is  the  experience  of  the 
Absolute  Ego;  there  are  no  'things'  at  all,  except  as  data  in  this 
Absolute  experience. 

Herb  art  marks   the  reaction  against  this   transcendentalism. 


The  world  of  appearances  is  self -contradictory.  But  appear- 
ances imply  realities  of  which  they  are  appearances;  and  in  this 
world  of  Realen  the  contradictions  do  not  exist.  Things  are 
composed  of  numbers  of  these  Realen,  which  are  simple,  inex- 
tended,  immutable  beings. 

Schopenhauer  also  held  out  for  Kant's  Dinge  an  sich.  The  belief 
in  their  existence  seemed  to  him  irresistible;  and  tho  we  cannot 
have  direct  insight  into  the  sort  of  existence  they  have  for  them- 
selves, we  do  know  that  the  world  is  their  image  or  representa- 
tion. Now  in  our  own  inner  life  we  have  given  the  existence-for- 
itself  of  which  our  body  is  the  outward  image;  and  we  can  infer 
that  the  reality  behind  the  world-image  is  analogous  with  what  is 
fundamental  in  this  inner  life  of  ours.  But  the  essence  of  our 
inner  life  is  will;  this  then  is  the  essence  of  all  reality  as  it  is  in 
itself. 

Fechner  harks  back  rather  to  Spinoza,  and  speaks  as  if  ma- 
terial and  mental  qualities  coexisted  throughout  the  universe — 
which  however  is  not  One  Substance,  but  a  hierarchy  of  existences. 
Animals  and  plants  have  psychic  life.  So  has  the  earth.  So  has 
the  solar  system,  and  finally  the  universe  as  a  whole.  The  ma- 
terial and  the  mental  everywhere  coexist;  they  are  two  aspects  of 
one  reality,  like  the  convex  and  concave  aspects  of  one  and  the 
same  curve.  A  number  of  other  writers  follow  Fechner  more  or 
less,  among  them  Paulsen  (who  shows  strongly  the  influence  of 
Schopenhauer  and  proceeds  through  panparallelism  to  panpsy- 
chism),  and  Haeckel,  who  calls  his  doctrine  monism. 

To  go  back  to  Britain:  Clifford,  influenced  by  Spinoza,  carried 
the  psycho-physical  concomitance  on  down  by  analogy,  through 
the  animal  and  vegetable  kingdoms,  to  the  inorganic  realm. 
Then,  being  a  student  of  Hume  and  Mill,  and  realizing  fully  that 
the  material  qualities  which  we  attribute  to  things  are  but  quali- 
ties of  our  perceptions  of  them,  he  reached  a  panpsychic  position 
somewhat  similar  to  that  of  Leibniz  or  Schopenhauer.  The 
reality  of  the  brain-consciousness  concomitance  is  consciousness; 
the  'brain'  being  but  a  name  for  the  possible  perceptions  of  this 
reality  in  another  consciousness.  Similarly,  all  the  material 
qualities  we  attribute  to  other  things  are  but  our  possible  percep- 
tions of  them;  in  themselves  they  are  mind-dust — a  sort  of  reality 
which  attains  higher  and  higher  forms  as  we  ascend  the  organic 
scale  and  in  man  becomes  consciousness. 


This  theory  has  been  worked  out  from  Clifford's  hints  in  two 
brilliant  American  books,  written  independently  of  each  other: 
Dr.  Prince's  Nature  of  Mind  and  Human  Automatism  and  Pro- 
fessor Strong's  Why  the  Mind  Has  a  Body.  The  latter,  the  more 
careful  and  elaborate,  proceeds  by  establishing  a  presumption  in 
favor  of  parallelism  as  the  most  plausible  psycho-physical  theory, 
and  then  argues  for  the  truth  of  the  position  of  the  British  ideal- 
ists, that  all  the  'material'  qualities  we  know  are  qualities  of  our 
experience.  The  world  of  our  experience  is,  however,  a  fragmen- 
tary world;  there  is  no  explanation  of  the  order  of  its  elements 
without  the  belief  in  a  world  of  things-in-themselves  'behind'  it, 
a  continuous  world  that  causes  these  sensations  in  us  when  our 
sense-organs  permit.  These  things-in-themselves  are  homogene- 
ous with  our  consciousness,  and  of  a  sub-mental  nature. 

In  a  number  of  modern  writers  a  similar  theory  is  sketched  or 
postulated.  But  it  is  usually  difficult  to  ascertain  whether  the 
doctrine  is  that  of  the  concomitance  of  physical  and  psychical 
qualities  in  things,  or  is  a  pure  panpsychism,  ascribing  only  mental 
qualities  to  things  themselves  and  putting  the  material  qualities 
into  the  perceptions  of  things — where  they  become  mental  quali- 
ties also.  Among  these  modern  writers  are  Romanes  (who  would 
lump  the  reality  behind  things  into  a  world-soul),  Stout,  Lloyd 
Morgan,  and  Marshall.  Very  recently  Professor  Heymans  of 
Groningen  has  argued  ably  for  panpsychism  (which  he  calls 
psychische  Moni&nus),  in  a  manner  somewhat  similar  to  Profes- 
sor Strong's,  reaching  however  the  belief  of  Romanes  and  Fechner 
and  Paulsen  in  a  world-soul. 

Now  panpsychism  seems  to  me  to  express  the  truth  of  the 
matter  essentially ;  and  many  of  the  arguments  for  it,  particularly 
the  careful  reasoning  of  Professor  Strong,  seem  to  me  sound.  But 
the  name  'panpsychism,'  the  terminology  used  by  the  panpsy- 
chists,  and  their  general  course  of  argument,  seem  to  me  un- 
fortunate, and  responsible  for  the  comparatively  slight  attention 
that  has  been  won  for  the  theory.  'Panpsychism'  seems  to  take 
the  substance  out  of  things  and  leave  them  a  'merely  mental' 
existence;  all  the  language  used  seems  to  imply  a  dualism  of  mind 
and  matter,  and  then  to  deny  the  reality  of  matter.  Further, 
the  theory  is  reached  by  establishing  subjective  idealism  as  against 
realism,  and  then  by  supplementing  this  idealism,  rilling  out  the 


6 

gaps  in  its  world,  with  psychic  existences.  It  is  a  sort  of  plural- 
istic idealism.  But  today  the  philosophic  world  has  pretty 
largely  moved  away  from  idealism  to  realism,  and  thus  dissents 
at  the  outset.  We  have  a  strong  neo-realistic  school  which  holds 
that  things  have  in  themselves  the  very  material  qualities  they 
have  in  our  perception ;  they  deny  the  idealistic  point  of  view  in 
toto,  and  need  to  be  reckoned  with  in  another  way. 

It  seems  to  me  that  the  essential  truth  of  panpsychism  is  not 
dependent  at  all  upon  a  conversion  to  the  idealistic  point  of  view; 
that  a  better  way  to  ascertain  the  nature  of  things  in  themselves 
would  be  to  confess  the  inadequacy  of  subjective  idealism  at  the 
outset  and  accept  at  its  face  value  the  world  that  science  gives  us 
— that  is,  as  a  world  existing  independently  of  consciousness;  and 
then  on  a  realistic  basis,  and  in  realistic  language,  to  indicate  the 
evidence  that  leads  to  this  particular  theory  of  the  nature  of  the 
things  that  make  up  the  universe.  Such  an  attempt  is  hinted  at 
in  the  opening  paragraph  of  Professor  Strong's  later  essay  called 
Substitutionalism.  There  he  abandons  his  idealistic  language  and 
speaks  of  'physical  things'  not  as  'permanent  possibilities  of  sen- 
sation/ but  as  the  actual  independently  existing  constituents  of 
the  world-order.  He  asks  the  reader  to  make  "a  certain  assump- 
tion," namely,  "that  our  perceptive  experiences  are  not  ...  in 
the  part  or  place  of  the  order  which  they  reveal,  but  in  a  place 
represented  by  that  of  the  brain-events  with  which  they  are  (as 
we  say)  correlated.  The  experiences,  in  other  words,  are  the  brain- 
events,  considered  in  themselves;  and  all  other  physical  events, 
in  themselves,  are  what  may  be  called  infra-experiences — some-, 
thing  of  like  nature  with  human  experiences,  only  far  less  highly 
organized."  This  hypothesis  "puts  the  experiences  in  the  same 
world  with  the  object,  only  in  a  different  place — in  the  brain,  in- 
stead of  in  the  object  perceived." 

Professor  Strong  has  not  as  yet,  however,  developed  an  exposi- 
tion of  his  theory  in  this  realistic  language,  nor  with  particular 
reference  to  the  point  here  stated,  of  the  place  of  perceptional  data 
in  the  world-order.  This  point  seems  to  me  the  crux  of  the  whole 
matter;  and  the  purpose  of  this  dissertation  is  to  outline  the  chain 
of  argument  by  which,  studying  the  facts  of  the  process  of  per- 
ception in  a  purely  realistic  manner,  i.e.,  by  the  concepts  of  com- 
mon-sense and  ordinary  scientific  usage,  we  may  be  led  to  that 


conception  of  the  nature  of  things  in  themselves  which  Clifford 
sketched;  and  then  to  make  some  further  suggestions  as  to  their 
nature  suggested  by  the  work  of  Prince  and  Strong  and  Heymans, 
but  not  definitely  formulated  by  them. 

We  shall  refrain  throughout  from  resting  on  the  authority  of 
historic  metaphysical  systems,  and  seek  to  avoid  begging  any 
question  by  leaning  on  the  connotations  of  commonly  accepted 
terminology.  We  shall  thus  escape  the  snare  of  misrepresenting, 
and  drawing  unfair  prestige,  from  philosophers  who  would  per- 
haps not  really  sympathize  with  the  use  made  of  their  language, 
and  the  equally  grave  danger  of  trusting  to  the  conceptions  that 
lie  implicit  in  so  many  common  words.  The  language  used  will 
thus  at  times  be  awkward  and  unidiomatic;  but  it  will,  it  is  hoped, 
be  exacter  and  less  ambiguous.  Similarly,  we  shall  refrain  from 
criticising  other  theories.  It  is  impossible  in  the  space  which 
we  could  devote  to  it  to  do  justice  to  them  or  to  answer  the  re- 
buttals which  their  adherents  would  make  to  our  objections.  The 
attempt  will  be  made  instead  to  examine  experience  afresh  and 
without  preconceptions;  to  point  out  the  need  of  theories,  as 
principles  of  explanation,  which  can  never  be  verified,  as  scientific 
theories  are  verified,  because  we  necessarily  lack  the  means  of  veri- 
fication; and  to  show  that  among  these  necessary  metaphysical 
or  extrascientific  theories  are  that  which  postulates  an  existence 
of  things  in  themselves  and  that  which  reveals  their  nature  as 
homogeneous  with  consciousness  but  without  its  complexity  and 
organic  unity. 

REFERENCES 

For  Protagoras     Thecetetus  of  Plato;  Diogenes  Laertius,  Bk.  IX. 

For  Democritus    Arist.  Met.  I.  4.     De  Anima,  I.  2. 

Hobbes  ....     Leviathan,  Pt.  I.,  Ch.  I.  De  Corpore. 

Locke     ....     Essay   concerning   Human   Understanding,   Bk. 

IV. 

Berkeley  .  .  .  Treatise  on  the  Principles  of  Human  Knowledge. 
Hume  ....  An  Enquiry  concerning  Human  Understanding. 
J.  S.  Mill  .  .  .  Examination  of  Sir  Wm.  Hamilton,  Ch.  XI. 

Logic,  Bk.  I.,  Ch.  V.  §  5. 
Descartes .    .    .     Principia  Philosophiae.     Le  Monde  ou   Traite 

de  la  Lumiere. 


8 


Spinoza 
Leibniz 


Kant 
Beck 


Herbart  .  .  . 
Schopenhauer  . 
Spencer  .  .  . 
W.  K.  Clifford, 

G.  J.  Romanes, 
G.  T.  Fechner  . 

F.  Paulsen    .    . 
M.  Prince     .    . 

G.  F.  Stout  .   . 
Lloyd  Morgan, 
H.  R.  Marshall, 
C.  A.  Strong.    . 


G.  Heymans.    . 


Ethics. 

Monadology.     New  Essays  concerning  the  Human 

Understanding . 

Critique  of  Pure  Reason. 

Einzig  moglicher  Standpunkt  aus  welchem  die 

kritische    Philosophie    beurtheilt    werden    muss. 

(Riga,  1796) 

General  Metaphysics. 

World  as  Will  and  Idea. 

First  Principles. 

Lectures  and  Essays,  vol.  2;    Body  and  Mind; 

On  the  Nature  of  Things  in  Themselves. 

Mind  and  Motion;  Monism. 

Die  Seelenleben. 

Introduction  to  Philosophy. 

The  Nature  of  Mind  and  Human  Automatism. 

Manual  of  Psychology,  ch.  on  Body  and  Mind. 

Animal  Life  and  Intelligence,  Ch.  XII. 

Instinct  and  Reason,  pp.  19-67. 

Why  the  Mind  Has  a  Body;  Journal  of  Phil., 

Psy.,  and  Sci.  Methods:  I.  233,  519,  543.     Phil. 

Rev.    XIII,     337.     Essays    Philosophical    and 

Psychological  in  Honor  of  Wm.  James,  article 

Substitutionalism. 

Einleitung  in  die  Metaphysik.     Zeitsch.  fur  Psy. 

XVII,  62-105,  XXXIII,  216-222. 


I.     EXPERIENCE  AND  THE  UNIVERSE 

Before  we  ask  what  sort  of  existence  things  have  in  them- 
selves we  must  ask  whether  they  have  any  existence  in  them- 
selves. The  history  of  thought  which  we  have  traced  shows 
that  it  is  very  possible  for  acute  thinkers  to  hold  that  the  world 
of  things  exists  in  no  other  sense  than  as  a  'construct'  in  our 
minds,  as  a  vision  of  the  experiences  that  would  accrue  under 
all  possible  conditions.  What  actually  exists  is — just  the  data 
of  experience  and  nothing  more.  Absent  objects  are  but  poten- 
tial experiences  of  ours;  they  are  nothing  for  themselves.  The 
prevalence  of  such  opinions  should  teach  us  that  we  cannot  begin 
reflection  by  assuming  the  existence  of  the  universe  in  the 
common  sense  manner.  At  whatever  conclusions  we  may  arrive, 
we  must  start  with  what  we  find  actually  given,  actually  present, 
and  justify  our  further  beliefs. 

What  then  do  I  find  given?  What  are  the  data  from  which  I 
can  unquestionably  start?  What  I  find  given  now  is — well, 
whatever  happens  to  exist  now  within  the  horizon  of  my  expe- 
rience. It  is  difficult  to  find  words  that  shall  not  imply  more 
than  I  wish  to  denote.  'Horizon'  seems  to  imply  something 
beyond  the  horizon.  'My'  experience  seems  to  imply  some  one 
else's  experience.  But  perhaps  there  is  nothing  beyond  this 
'horizon,'  beyond  what  I  call  'my'  experience.  Undoubtedly 
I  believe  in  the  existence  of  something  beyond,  but  that  belief 
is  a  fact  within  my  experience,  and  the  facts  believed  in,  which 
it  points  to,  may  not  exist.  That  is,  the  belief,  tho  a  fact,  may 
be  an  illusion;  its  existence  here  and  now  may  be  all  there  is 
to  it.  On  the  other  hand,  there  may  be  facts  beyond  this 
'horizon,'  facts  not  given  among  these  data,  but  given  among 
other  data  elsewhere.  Not  only  may  my  belief  in  the  king  of 
England  be  a  fact  given,  one  of  my  primary  data,  but  the  king 
of  England  himself,  a  quite  different  reality,  may  actually  exist 
tho  not  given  among  these  data.  Other  existences  there  may 
be,  simultaneous  with  these  data  I  am  starting  from,  but  they 
are  not  present  with  these  data,  as  these  data  are  present  with 
one  another.  I  may  doubt  the  existence  of  all  other  data,  I 
cannot  doubt  these.  I  may  believe  in  other  existences,  I  may 


10 

have  good  grounds  for  such  a  belief;  but  all  I  know  to  exist,  in 
the  strictest  sense,  is — just  these  data  now  present.  This  much 
of  existence  I  know  at  first  hand,  now. 

It  is  important  to  realize  sharply  the  fact  that  here  are  a  cer- 
tain number  of  data — or  perhaps  some  would  prefer  to  say  one 
datum  which  can  be  analyzed  into  many  elements — actually 
present.  Either  this  is  all  there  is  to  reality,  or  else  other  reali- 
ties exist  but  do  not  exist  in  the  relation  of  being  present  with 
these  data  as  they  are  present  with  one  another.  If  the  universe 
we  all  practically  believe  in  does  exist,  then  I  can  say  that  all 
that  I  have  given  (or,  all  that  is  given  here)  is  a  very  small  por- 
tion of  the  universe,  a  small  field.  What  lies  within  that  field 
I  know  directly  to  exist;  what  lies  beyond  it  I  can  only  infer 
to  exist.  All  inference  must  start  ultimately  from  the  immediate. 
And  what  I  have  given  after  I  make  the  inference  is  not  those 
inferred  outer  realities,  it  is  beliefs  in  them,  conceptions  of  them 
— as  far  as  A  is  from  Z  from  the  same  facts  as  those  which  make 
up  the  rich  teeming  universe  they  are  conceptions  of.  Unless 
then  I  am  what  is  technically  called  a  solipsist,  my  experience 
does  not  coincide  with  the  universe  I  believe  in.  If  I  should 
analyze  my  experience  (i.e.  these  data  present)  ever  so  thoroughly, 
I  should  not  find  there  the  existence  of  the  king  of  England. 
At  most  moments  indeed  I  should  find  there  not  even  a  belief 
or  conception  or  imagination  of  his  existence,  no  reference  to 
him  at  all.  Yet  I  do  believe,  when  I  think  about  the  matter, 
that  he  exists,  beyond  this  field  of  experience;  exists  not  only  when 
I  am  thinking  of  him  and  believing  in  his  existence,  but  all  the 
time;  existed  before  I  ever  thought  of  him,  and  will  exist  perhaps 
when  nothing  that  can  be  called  my  experience  any  longer  exists. 
But  now,  what  right  have  I  to  believe  in  the  existence  of 
anything  beyond  'my'  experience — these  actually  present  data? 
I  have  this  right,  that  the  belief  in  a  universe  beyond  'my' 
experience  is  the  only  belief  which  adequately  explains  the 
facts  of  'my'  experience.  There  is  certainly  no  scientific  proof 
that  a  universe  exists,  that  anything  more  than  these  present 
data  exist.  If  a  man  refuses  to  believe  in  anything  beyond  the 
data  he  finds  present,  he  cannot  be  dislodged  from  his  position 
by  anything  but  laughter.  We  can  only  show  him  that  if  he 
is  to  be  consistent  in  his  skepticism  he  must  refuse  to  believe  in 


11 

anything  beyond  what  he  actually  finds  present.  He  never 
actually  finds  present  anything  beyond  the  now  present  data; 
the  belief  in  his  own  past  experience  is  as  truly  a  transcendent 
belief  as  that  in  the  existence  of  the  other  side  of  the  earth.  He 
has  indeed  these  facts  present  which  he  calls  memories.  But 
they  may  conceivably  be  illusions;  i.e.  their  existence  does  not 
necessarily  imply  the  existence  of  the  earlier  facts  they  seem  to 
refer  to.  In  brief,  the  existence  of  one's  own  past  experience, 
of  other  people's  experiences,  and  of  things  outside  of  any  one's 
experience,  stand  on  the  same  footing.  To  believe  in  the  first 
is  just  as  truly  to  transcend  the  given,  and  to  transcend  the  possi- 
bility of  scientific  verification,  as  to  believe  in  the  last;  and  he 
who  denies  the  last  has  no  more  justification  for  his  denial  than 
he  who  should  deny  the  first. 

For  metaphysical  theories  are  necessary  if  we  are  to  explain 
anything.  All  three  of  these  primary  metaphysical  beliefs  have 
very  much  in  the  constitution  of  the  very  'now'  of  a  given 
experience  to  support  them,  and  we  can  make  all  three  leaps 
into  the  beyond  with  practically  equal  justification.  The  evi- 
dence is  indeed  in  all  three  cases  as  overwhelming  as  in  the  nature 
of  the  case  it  well  could  be.  If  it  is  not  absolutely  coercive 
logically,  we  must  not  chafe  at  that  inevitable  limitation  or 
hope  to  find  any  other  beliefs  which  shall  be  more  coercive. 
For  no  metaphysical  theories  can  we  find  scientific,  i.e.  coercive, 
proof.  All  any  theory  of  existence  can  do  is  to  fit  known  facts; 
and  we  only  claim  for  ours  that  it  thus  fits  them,  as  no  other 
does.  Let  us  take  up,  then,  each  of  the  first  three  great  steps 
in  explanation  of  present  data,  and  show  what  facts  they  are 
invoked  to  explain. 

In  the  first  place,  I  believe  in  my  own  past  experience;  i.e., 
in  data  that  were  once  given,  present,  as  these  data  are  now.  I 
believe  that  my  past  experiences  have  been  continuous  with  one 
another  and  have  led  up  continuously  to  this  present  experience. 
I  thus  add  to  my  conception  of  a  '  field  of  experience '  (which  is  a 
name  for  the  data  I  find  actually  now  present)  that  of  a  '  stream 
of  experience'  existing  in  time,  of  which  this  present  'field'  is 
the  terminal  plane.  I  believe  that  this  stream  will  flow  on  into 
what  I  call  the  future;  so  I  may  call  the  present  field  a  cross- 
section  of  the  stream. 


12 

Now  the  justification  of  this  belief  is  not  in  the  mere  existence 
of  facts  which  I  call  memories;  for  memories  might  deceive  me. 
It  is  perfectly  conceivable  that  the  facts  they  seem  to  refer  to 
never  really  existed.  But  there  would  then  be  no  explanation 
of  these  memory  facts,  or  for  all  our  acts  and  thoughts  which  in 
the  present  seem  to  depend  on  and  verify  the  truth  to  which 
memory  points.  I  act,  that  is,  not  only  as  if  my  memory  were 
a  present  fact,  but  as  if  the  fact  it  refers  to,  the  past  fact,  had 
been  real  in  the  past.  I  act  on  anticipation  as  if  the  future  facts 
it  refers  to  were  going  to  be  real  facts  in  the  future.  I  find  I 
act  wisely  in  so  doing.  Of  course,  it  might  be  objected  that  the 
fact  of  the  correlation  of  memories  and  acts,  and  the  consequent 
verification  of  memory,  consists  in  a  set  of  facts  most  of  which  we 
can  only  anticipate  or  remember  at  a  given  moment.  And  since 
these  memories  and  anticipations  may  be  illusions,  we  have  not 
got  forward  in  our  argument.  So  be  it.  But  the  point  is  that 
this  now  complex  set  of  present  facts,  including  these  memories 
and  anticipations,  finds  an  adequate  explanation  in  the  postulate 
of  a  real  past  and  future,  and  of  experience  as  a  stream  extending 
from  the  past  through  the  present  into  the  future.  If  any  one 
insists  that  explanation  is  an  illegitimate  category,  that  present 
facts  just  exist,  and  that  is  all  there  is  to  it,  he  cannot  be  refuted. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  however,  every  one  does  believe  in  the  past 
and  (barring  the  sudden  end  of  everything)  in  the  future;  and 
if  this  belief  is  true,  it  does  beautifully  explain  what  every  one 
finds  in  his  present  experience. 

In  very  similar  case  is  the  belief  in  other  fields  of  experience 
contemporaneous  with  this  present  field.  I  believe  not  only 
in  'my'  stream  of  experience,  but  in  'other  people's'  similar 
streams  of  experience.  In  ordinary  language,  I  believe  not  only 
in  my  own  existence,  but  in  that  of  other  people.  It  is  true 
that  naive  thought  is  apt  to  mean  something  more  by  'my  exist- 
ence' than  the  existence  of  a  present  field  of  data,  changing  in 
time.  But  putting  aside  the  question  of  the  existence  of  'souls' 
or  'egos'  or  'subjects,'  common  thought  means  by  'my  existence,' 
by  the  existence  of  'my  mind,'  or  'consciousness/  at  least  the 
existence  of  this  present  field  of  data;  and  by  'other  people's 
existence,'  other  'minds'  or  'consciousnesses,'  it  means  at  least 
the  existence  of  other  more  or  less  similar  fields  of  data,  simul- 


13 

taneous  with  this  field,  but  not  present  with  it,  not  a  part  of  the 
same  field.  There  is  nothing  in  this  common  usage  to  indicate 
that  mind  or  consciousness  is  a  substance  or  kind  of  existence 
different  from  some  other  substance  or  kind  of  existence.  A 
consciousness  is  one  of  these  small  fields  of  data-present- 
together,  of  which  each  of  us  has,  or  is,  a  sample — as  contrasted 
with  the  universe,  which  is  very  much  greater  in  extent,  and  com- 
posed, apparently,  of  data  not  all  present  together. 

It  must  not  be  forgotten  that  all  that  I  have  given  is  one  such 
field  of  data;  the  belief  in  other  fields  is  an  inference.  It  is  an 
inference  which  we  all  make  instinctively,  as  we  infer  our  own 
past  existence.  But  it  cannot  be  logically  proved,  and  its  justi- 
fication to  reason  lies  also  in  the  fact  that  it  is  the  only  adequate 
explanation  of  the  peculiarities  of  the  given  field  of  data.  The 
accepted  evidence  for  the  existence  of  other  fields  is  something 
as  follows,  when  phrased  in  the  cautious  terminology  we  are  using. 
I  find  within  my  field  one  constant  factor,  'my  body.'  The 
very  existence  of  my  field  seems  somehow  to  be  peculiarly 
dependent  upon  or  related  to  this  factor  in  it.  Then  I  find 
intermittently  within  my  field  other  similar  data,  'other  bodies.' 
Dependent  upon  these  data  or  somehow  related  to  them  are 
supposed  to  be  other  whole  fields  of  data,  not  present  with  mine. 
When  certain  data  are  present  within  my  field  the  datum  I  call 
'my  body'  goes  through  certain  changes;  therefore  when  these 
'other  bodies'  go  through  similar  changes,  I  am  to  infer  the 
existence  of  similar  data  in  other  fields  of  data  not  present  here. 

It  is  apparent  that  there  is  no  conclusive  argument  here.  It 
amounts  to  saying  that  because  there  is  one  permanent  group  of 
data  within  the  present  field,  whenever  I  find  other  more  or  less 
similar  groups  of  data  within  it,  I  can  infer  the  existence  outside 
of  the  present  field  of  other  whole  fields  of  data.  This  is  more 
of  a  leap  than  logic  would  warrant!  It  is  very  much  more  of 
a  leap  than  the  simpler  belief  in  'things,'  in  the  existence  of  other 
data  beyond  this  present  field.  Many  present  data  are  exactly 
similar  to  past  data  of  this  field,  reappear  in  the  same  relative 
position  among  the  other  data,  and  fulfil  the  same  functions;  the 
inference  that  they  are  in  some  sense  the  same  data,  now  in  and 
now  out  of  this  field,  is  much  simpler  than  the  complicated  and 
logically  dubious  inference  we  have  been  considering.  As  a 


14 

matter  of  history,  the  argument  we  have  tried  to  state  according 
to  its  strict  logical  worth  for  those  who  have  no  prior  belief  in 
data  outside  the  present  field,  is  always  expressed  even  by  those 
who  profess  no  such  prior  belief  in  terms  of  such  a  belief.  Our 
consciousness  is  intimately  related  to  our  bodies;  therefore 
other  bodies,  so  similar  to  ours  in  structure  and  actions,  may  be 
assumed  to  have  related  to  them  similar  consciousnesses.  The 
'consciousness'  in  this  argument  is  equivalent  to  our  phrase, 
'the  present  field/  and  therefore  includes  the  'my  body'  and 
'other  body'  elements  in  it.  The  only  plausibility  of  the  argu- 
ment, therefore,  rests  on  the  belief  in  other  facts,  a  body-outside- 
of-this-field,  outside  of  '  consciousness,'  to  which  this  field  or  con- 
sciousness is  related,  and  other  bodies  outside  of  this  field,  to 
which  other  fields  of  data,  or  consciousnesses,  are  attached. 
In  short,  the  bridge  between  the  presence  of  one  consciousness 
and  the  belief  in  other  consciousnesses  is  the  belief  in  things 
outside  of  consciousness.  And  it  would  be  illogical  in  the  ex- 
treme to  hold  the  belief  in  other  minds  or  consciousnesses 
justified  and  not  to  hold  the  belief  in  things  outside  of  these 
consciousnesses,  data  outside  of  these  fields,  justified. 

It  is  perfectly  possible,  as  we  said  in  the  case  of  the  belief  in 
one's  own  past,  to  insist  that  the  demand  for  explanation  is 
illegitimate.  But  in  that  case  one  will  never  justify  the  belief 
in  one's  own  past  or  in  other  minds  any  more  than  the  belief 
in  things  outside  of  these  minds.  If  one  admits  the  legitimacy 
of  holding  a  belief  because  it  offers  an  explanation  of  the  facts,  one 
can  justify  all  these  beliefs.  Either  a  belief  only  in  what  is  'here' 
and  '  now '  or — to  be  consistent — a  belief  in  the  existence  outside  of 
this  'here'  and  'now'  of  the  whole  universe  of  common  sense. 

What  are  the  facts  in  the  present  field  which  the  belief  in  a  uni- 
verse explains?  If  that  belief  is  true  it  explains  the  following 
facts,  otherwise  inexplicable. 

1)  The  fact  that  while  'ideas'  and  'emotions'  follow  other  data 
preexisting  in  the  field  according  to  fairly  well  traceable  laws  (or 
habits),  are  largely  modifiable  at  will,  and  depend  upon  the  gen- 
eral nature  of  the  field  at  the  time,  those  other  data  which  are 
called  sometimes  'things'  and  sometimes  'sensations'  act  quite 
differently.  They  jump  into  the  field,  as  it  were,  abrupt  and  un- 
related to  anything  else  there  preexisting.  The  strongest  willing 


15 

cannot  directly  exorcise  them;  so  long  as  certain  other  events  do 
not  happen,  e.g.  the  shutting  of  our  eyes  (by  which  I  mean  only 
the  appearance  of  a  certain  definite  event  within  the  field),  they 
persist.  We  are,  so  to  speak,  at  their  mercy.  These  'objective 
data'  (as  we  may  call  them,  in  a  purely  denotative  way)  certainly 
seem  to  be  subject  to  other  laws  than  those  of  the  interworkings 
of  the  data  within  my  field.  All  this  is  quite  explicable  on  a  real- 
istic basis.  If  a  world  of  things  exists,  it  is  easy  to  see  that  it  may 
force  itself  into  this  field,  so  to  speak.  What  exists  here  is  the  re- 
sult of  what  exists  without,  this  field  is  what  it  is  from  moment  to 
moment  according  to  the  events  going  on  without. 

Indeed,  this  outer  world  seems  at  times  to  put  an  end  to  a  field 
or  consciousness — either  temporarily,  as  when  one  is  stunned,  or 
permanently,  as  at  death.  If  a  bullet,  e.g.,  is  a  phase  of  my  field 
of  data,  how  explain  the  fact  that  it  can  immediately  extinguish 
the  whole  field,  except  by  supposing  that  it  is,  or  represents,  a  fact 
in  an  outer  world?  Even  if  it  only  causes  pain,  why  should  my 
field  suddenly  manifest  this  terrible  phase,  so  unprepared  for  by 
its  previous  contents,  unless  it  is  affected  from  without?  To  see  a 
man  freezing  to  death,  or  writhing  in  the  grip  of  a  serpent,  or  from 
the  effects  of  poison  taken,  would  be  to  be  sure  that  he  was  really 
in  the  grip  of  a  reality  outside  of  his  own  field  or  consciousness. 

2)  The  second  set  of  facts  which  the  belief  in  a  universe  explains 
is  that  of  the  physical  order  or  pattern.  Our  fragmentary  'objec- 
tive data'  do  not  piece  together  into  a  coherent  whole.  But  by 
filling  them  out  in  imagination,  i.e.  with  those  other  data  called 
'ideas,'  we  can  construct  a  complete  objective  world,  so  complete 
and  definite  that  we  can  predict  from  our  construction  in  the  great- 
est detail  what  data  will  exist  in  our  field  at  definite  future  times. 
There  are  no  objective  data  in  our  field  connecting  these  frag- 
ments; but  we  can  take  the  fragments  and  plot  their  curve,  as 
mathematicians  say,  and  find  an  order  into  which  each  actual  and 
every  possible  future  datum  will  fit.  This  order  is  permanent  and 
independent  of  the  actual  existence  within  our  field  of  any  of  its 
fragments.  Ideas  and  wishes  are  evanescent,  never  quite  repeat- 
ing themselves,  and  forming  no  objective  order.  But  these  objec- 
tive data  recur  at  their  proper  place  in  the  order  with  the  inevi- 
table regularity  and  accuracy  of  clock-work.  They  seem  not  to 
spring  up  spontaneously  within  our  field,  but  to  come  to  it  out  of 
this  order. 


16 

3)  A  third  set  of  facts  is  those  which  show  that  our  objective 
data  come  in  groups,  a  'sight'  being  a  sign  to  us  of  a  possible 
'  touch-datum/  etc.     It  is  difficult  to  explain  this  except  on  the 
assumption  that  they  are  different  qualities  of,  or  effects  of,  the 
same  'things/  which  have  an  existence  independently  of  the  ap- 
pearance of  these  data  within  the  field.     Similarly  the  apparent 
fact  that  all  our  fields  of  data  (if  I  grant  the  existence  of  others  be- 
sides my  own)  have  their  'objective'  data  belonging  to  the  same 
order.     When  I  have  certain  data  within  my  field,  (as  when  I  chop 
down  a  tree),  certain  similar  data  appear  within  your  field,  and  fit 
into  the  same  conceived  world-order.   No  one  person  ever  had  more 
than  an  insignificant  fraction  of  the  data  of  this  conceived  order ; 
but  science,  finding  that  all  people's  data,  (i.e.  the  data  existing  in 
all  these  fields)  belong  to  the  same  conceived  order,  pieces  them 
together  and  makes  up  the  picture  of  a  single  coherent  universe. 

4)  We  need  not  dwell  on  such  further  significant  facts  as  those 
of  the  physiology  of  perception — which  are  meaningless  if  there 
is  no  outer  world.     Of  what  meaning,  e.g.,  are  these  data  which  I 
call  'eyes/  unless  on  the  supposition  that  there  are  real  eyes,  exist- 
ing whether  or  not  these  eye-data  are  at  the  moment  existing 
within  the  field,  which  are  a  real  means  of  bringing  news  of  an 
outer  world?     We  need  not  dwell  on  the  facts  of  cosmic  history, 
which  are  without  meaning  if  there  was  no  universe  before  the  time 
when  human  fields  of  data  or  consciousnesses  existed.     We  need 
not  dwell  on  the  fact  that  if  these  human  fields  of  data  are  all  that 
exist,  then  chairs  and  houses  pop  into  existence  when  we  open  our 
eyes  and  pop  out  of  existence  when  we  close  them.     It  is  con- 
ceivable indeed  that  we  should  properly  call  these   chairs  and 
houses  'groups  of  sensations/  and  that  these  groups  of  sensations 
do  pop  in  and  out  of  existence.     But  the  point  is,  there  is  no  ex- 
planation then  of  that  dependableness  which  they  actually  have, 
or  of  the  changes  which  have  apparently  gone  on  in  things  during 
the  interval  while  they  are  'popped  out'  of  existence.     We  need 
not  dwell  on  the  fact  that,  if  we  grant  the  existence  of  simultane- 
ous consciousnesses,  which  influence  one  another,  there  is  a  gap 
between  the  cause  in  the  one  consciousness  and  its  effect  in  an- 
other.    During  a  certain  interval,  according  to   science,  aether- 
waves  or  some  other  physical  facts  exist.     If  we  refuse  to  admit 
the  real  existence  of  physical  facts  not  included  within  the  fields, 


17 

or  consciousnesses,  then  nothing  exists  during  this  time-gap,  i.e. 
nothing  of  this  causal  chain.  The  chain  between  the  two  con- 
sciousnesses is  broken.  A  cause  exists  in  one  consciousness,  then 
nothing  exists,  then  the  effect  exists  in  the  other  consciousness. 
Only  the  belief  in  the  real  existence  of  the  physical  universe 
bridges  this  gap. 

It  is  not  enough  to  admit  all  these  facts  and  then  say  that  the 
universe  exists,  yes,  but  'as  a  construct/  as  ' permanent  possibil- 
ities of  sensation'  (i.e.  of  facts  within  the  fields).  If  the  universe 
exists  only  as  a  construct,  as  a  set  of  possibilities,  then  nothing  at 
all  exists  save  the  consciousnesses  or  fields,  which  are  far  from 
making  up  the  universe  which  is  necessary  to  explain  the  facts  we 
have  recapitulated.  If  while  being  'possibilities  of  sensation* 
they  are  likewise  real  present  existences,  well  and  good,  our  point 
is  granted.  There  is  no  half-way  position.  Either  the  conscious- 
nesses alone  exist,  with  their  actual  and  potential  data;  or  the 
universe  exists  in  its  entirety.  In  the  first  case  the  wiping  out  of 
consciousnesses  would  leave  nothing  behind;  in  the  second  case 
it  would  leave  all  the  rest  of  the  universe  behind.  Only  the  second 
belief  explains  the  facts  we  have  called  attention  to.  And  only 
this  belief  furnishes  the  bridge  for  assuming  the  existence  of  other 
consciousnesses  from  the  one  present.  Our  alternative  is  then 
sharp.  Either  a  thoroughgoing  refusal  to  try  to  explain  the  pres- 
ent data ;  or  a  thoroughgoing  and  consistent  willingness  to  explain 
them,  which  results  in  the  conviction  that  the  whole  universe  of 
science  exists,  not  only  in  the  sense  of  possibilities  of  data  within 
this  field  and  others,  but  for  itself,  i.e.,  independently  of  this  field 
or  others,  and  whether  or  not  they  should  be  wiped  out  of  exist- 
ence. 

II.    THINGS  vs.  PERCEPTIONS 

We  have  now  answered  our  first  question  and  assured  ourselves 
that  things  do  have  an  existence  in  themselves.  We  began  by 
accepting  only  the  existence  of  the  data  now  discoverably  present, 
and  saw  that  unless  we  were  to  reject  the  principle  of  explanation 
altogether,  we  are  irresistibly  led  to  the  belief  that  the  whole  uni- 
verse of  which  science  tells  us  really  exists  for  itself,  i.e.,  whether  or 
no  our  individual  consciousnesses,  or  fields  of  present  data,  were  to 
be  wiped  out.  Such  a  destruction  might  mean  a  wiping  out  of  bits 


18 

of  the  universe;  but  only,  if  science  and  our  ordinary  observation 
can  be  trusted,  of  small  bits.  And  it  is  not  clear  that  the  destruc- 
tion of  these  fields  of  data,  as  fields,  would  imply  at  all  the  destruc- 
tion of  the  data  which  make  up  those  fields;  these  data  now  pres- 
ent-together in  a  field  might  cease  to  be  present-together  and  yet 
all  continue  to  exist,  so  that  the  universe  would  not  lose  a  single 
item,  but  only  a  certain  relation  between  certain  items. 

We  are  as  yet  no  farther  along  than  common  sense.  We  began 
below  ground,  as  it  were,  building  up  our  foundations,  so  as  to  be 
sure  not  to  rest  on  illegitimate  assumptions.  Now  we  have 
reached  the  level  of  ordinary  life;  but  with  a  securer  sense  of  our 
right  to  be  there.  We  may  proceed  to  note  a  situation  in  our  uni- 
verse which  demands  a  further  unverifiable,  i.e.  'metaphysical/ 
theory  for  its  explanation.  That  situation  is,  in  a  word,  this :  the 
data  of  perception  are,  discoverably,  not  numerically  identical 
with  the  'things'  of  physical  science.  There  seems  to  be  no  place 
in  the  world  of  science  for  them.  Science  studies  the  'stimuli/ 
the  causes,  that  is,  of  our  data  of  perception;  it  traces  the  mechan- 
ism by  which  the  causal  influence  is  carried  from  the  'things/  the 
causes,  to  a  human  brain ;  it  finds  there  certain  brain-events  that 
are  effects  of  the  'things/  and  have  a  certain  degree  of  point  by 
point  correspondence  with  them — that  is,  there  is  a  concomitant 
variation  between  the  outer  'thing7  and  the  brain-event,  so  that 
a  change  in  the  one  produces  (to  a  certain  extent)  a  change  in  the 
other.  It  then  traces  an  ensuing  physical  process  out  through 
the  motor  nerves  to  some  physical  action  in  the  world.  But  no- 
where in  this  chain  of  events  does  it  find  the  data  of  perception. 

These  data  are  not  the  'things/  for  they  exist  at  a  later  moment 
than,  not  simultaneously  with,  the  things  which  they  'reveal/  of 
which  they  are  perceptions.  They  are  a  different  existence  from 
the  things,  and  not  dependent  upon  the  existence  of  the  things  at 
the  moment  of  their  existence.  The  things  themselves  are  the 
stimuli  of  the  perceptions,  the  causes  of  which  the  perception-data 
are  effects;  they  are  separated  from  those  perception-data  by  a 
measurable  interval  of  time.  The  star  which  sends  aether-waves 
to  me,  and  is  made  up  of  atoms  in  motion,  is  absolutely  another 
existence  from  this  set  of  qualities  that  make  up  my  star-datum. 
There  is  no  "idealism"  in  this.  It  is  one  of  the  facts  of  the 
make-up  of  our  realistic  universe. 


19 

Let  us  examine  this  situation.  This  star-datum  exists  now. 
But  science  tells  me  that  the  star  of  which  it  speaks  is  so  far  off 
that  it  takes  thousands  of  years  for  the  aether-waves  to  carry 
news  of  it  to  me.  That  star  then  may  have  been  dissipated  into 
wide-scattered  vapor,  or  burned  out,  and  so  ceased  to  exist  as  a 
shining  star,  many  years  ago.  In  some  cases  some  such  thing 
no  doubt  actually  happens,  as  in  the  case  of  'new  stars.'  A  star 
existed,  trillions  of  miles  away,  thousands  of  years  ago.  It  has 
utterly  ceased  to  exist  now.  But  this  star-datum,  this  twinkling 
point,  exists  now.  In  a  sense,  no  doubt,  we  may  call  both  events 
"the  same  star."  But  they  are  not  numerically  the  same  facts. 
One  fact  existed  thousands  of  years  ago,  the  other  exists  now. 

This  is  a  striking  instance,  because  of  the  length  of  the  time- 
gap.  But  of  course  exactly  the  same  thing  is  true  of  all  percep- 
tions. The  'thing'  of  science,  the  cause  of  the  perception-fact, 
exists  always  earlier  in  time  than  the  perception-fact.  A  man  is 
driving  a  nail.  I  am  a  hundred  feet  away.  A  fact  exists  at  the 
point  where  the  hammer  hits  the  nail.  But  at  the  time  when  my 
perception-fact  exists  (this  sharp  metallic  sound),  that  fact  at  the 
nail-point  has  ceased  to  exist.  The  hammer  is  raised  there,  there 
is  no  agitation  of  air-waves.  If  you  are  standing  two  hundred 
feet  away,  then  your  datum  of  perception,  again  a  sharp  metal- 
lic sound,  exists  at  a  still  later  moment,  when  both  the  fact  at  the 
nail-point  and  my  sound-datum  have  ceased  to  exist. 

This  then,  generalized,  is  the  situation.  A  fact  exists  from 
which  influences  radiate.  That  is  the  'thing'  of  science.  At  the 
instant  when  the  causal  influence  is  producing  certain  events  in  my 
brain  (or  very  close  to  that  instant)  the  qualities  which  make  up  my 
perception-fact  exist.  At  or  very  close  to  the  instant  when  another 
similar  causal  influence  from  the  thing  is  producing  similar  events  in 
your  brain  similar  qualities  exist  as  your  perception-fact.  So  much 
is  unquestioned  by  any  one  who  examines  the  actual  situation. 

But  now,  how  is  it  that  the  data  of  perception  seem  not  merely 
to  'reveal,'  but  to  be,  the  things  themselves  which  science  stud- 
ies, seem  to  be  'out  there'  where  the  things  are  which  send  their 
influences  to  the  brain?  Do  we  not  make  the  'out-there-ness'  of 
perception-data  an  illusion?  In  answer,  we  must  make  a  discrim- 
ination. The  'out-there-ness'  quality  of  our  data  cannot  be  illu- 
sory in  the  sense  of  being  unreal — for  we  cannot  deny  qualities 


20 

actually  found  in  our  data.  But  it  can  be  illusory  in  the  sense 
that  it  does  not  imply  that  the  data  really  are  in  the  real  'out- 
there'  of  which  science  speaks,  where  their  causes  exist.  That 
this  is  a  perfectly  valid  discrimination  is  proved  by  the  facts  of 
hallucination.  The  datum  then  present  has  all  the  quality  of 
' out-there-ness '  which  any  perception-datum  ever  has;  but  every 
one  acknowledges  that  the  datum  does  not  exist  in  the  real  'out- 
there/  It  is  perfectly  possible  then  to  believe  that  no  percep- 
tion-data exist  in  the  real  'out-there';  the  difference  between 
valid  perceptions  and  hallucinations  being  not  in  their  place  of 
existence,  but  in  the  fact  that  the  former  are  effects  of  and  corre- 
spond to  real  existences  in  the  real  'out-there, 'and  the  latter  do  not. 
Common  sense  is  justified  then  in  saying  that  we  perceive  the 
things  of  which  science  speaks.  We  do  perceive  them.  But 
what  does  that  statement  mean?  The  plain  man  does  not  ana- 
lyze it  or  perceive  its  apparent  discrepancy  with  the  facts  of  the 
physics  and  physiology  of  perception  which  we  have  noted.  In 
the  light  of  those  facts  it  can  mean  only  that  we  have  perception- 
data  which  are  effects  of  and  representative  of  the  things  them- 
selves. I  really  see  the  star  Vega.  That  is,  a  twinkling-point- 
of-light  exists  now,  which  is  the  effect  and  representative  of  that 
vast  whirl  of  atoms  which  existed  billions  of  miles  away,  and  may 
have  ceased  to  exist  many  years  ago  for  all  I  know.  I  really 
hear  the  sound  of  your  hammer.  That  is,  a  sharp  metallic  sound 
exists  now,  the  effect  and  representative  of  an  agitation  of  the  air- 
waves which  took  place  a  few  moments  ago  at  the  point  where  the 
hammer  itself  hit  the  nail,  but  no  longer  exists  there.  These  are 
the  facts.  But  there  seems  to  be  no  need  of  revising  our  common 
sense  language.  All  we  need  is  to  be  ready  to  discriminate,  when 
occasion  arises,  between  the  thing  itself,  in  the  real  'out-there/ 
the  cause  of  my  datum,  and  the  datum  (quality  of  'out-there- 
ness'  and  all),  which  exists  together  with  my  other  data  at  a  later 
moment.  Common  sense  has  no  need  of  making  this  discrimina- 
tion, and  being  a  practical  faculty,  does  not  make  it.  We  act 
upon  our  perception-data  as  if  they  were  the  actual  qualities  of 
the  things  in  the  real  'out-there,'  and  since  they  are  to  us  those 
things,  we  are  justified  in  so  doing.  The  actual  situation  is  much 
as  if  we  went  about  with  an  ingeniously  arranged  camera  obscura 
about  our  heads,  so  that  we  never  saw  the  real  world,  but  always 


21 

an  excellent  picture  of  it  on  the  glass  in  front  of  our  eyes.  We 
should  soon  learn  to  steer  ourselves  about  perfectly  by  means  of 
that  picture;  and  if  we  had  always  lived  with  that  box  about  our 
heads  that  picture  would  be  to  us  the  real  world.  Of  course  we 
should  have  to  suppose  a  similar  arrangement  for  each  of  the  other 
senses,  removing  us  by  a  step  from  every  outer  thing,  to  make 
this  picture  world  our  real  world.  But  that  is  actually  the  kind 
of  arrangement  we  are  born  into.  We  have  only  pictures  (if  we 
don't  take  that  word  too  literally)  of  things.  We  are  many  steps 
removed  from  them.  The  eye  is  an  excellent  camera  obscura; 
and  there  are  steps  before  and  after  the  eye  event  between  the 
things  themselves  and  our  perception-data. 

If  then  the  datum  of  perception  is  another  set  of  facts  from  the 
'  thing '  of  science,  existing  at  a  moment  removed  from  the  moment 
of  that  fact  by  all  the  time  required  for  the  causal  influence  to 
travel  from  thing  to  brain,  can  it  be  identified  with  any  other 
of  the  ' things'  of  which  science  tells  us?  That  is,  if  it  is  not 
identical  with  the  source  of  the  radiating  causal  influence,  the 
'thing'  which  it  stands  for  to  us — and  it  cannot  be  since  that 
'thing'  may  have  utterly  ceased  to  exist  when  it  exists — can 
it  be  identified  with  any  of  the  physical  effects  of  that  cause 
of  which  science  tells  us?  No.  Science  does  not  tell  us  that  the 
data  of  perception  are  identical  with  sether-waves  or  optical  dis- 
turbances, or  any  part  of  the  mechanism  between  the  cause  and 
its  brain-effect.  Nor  does  it  tell  us  that  they  are  identical  with 
those  brain-effects.  Indeed  it  finds  nothing  in  the  brain  but  atoms 
in  motion — finds  there  no  twinkling  points  of  light  or  sharp  me- 
tallic sounds.  So  we  are  left  in  the  lurch.  This  is  where  meta- 
physics gets  her  innings  again! 

All  that  science  can  tell  us  is  that  the  various  data  of  perception 
exist  actually  or  nearly  contemporaneously  with  various  brain- 
events.  There  is  a  definite  synchronism  between  definite  data 
of  perception  and  definite  brain-events.  All  the  possible  data  of 
human  perception  are  thus  correlated  with  possible  brain-events 
covering  a  certain  area  of  the  cortex.  But  where  do  they  exist? 
Are  we  to  be  left  with  a  mysterious  synchronism  and  nothing  else? 
Are  these  data  of  perception,  the  most  assuredly  real  of  all  facts, 
to  find  no  abiding  place  in  the  physical  universe,  to  be  left  just 
curiously  hovering  above  brain-events,  in  some  fourth  dimension 
perhaps,  at  any  rate  in  no  assignable  place? 


22 

We  might  think  we  had  escaped  the  difficulty  by  calling  them 
' psychic'  events,  and  saying  that,  being  ' psychic/  they  could  of 
course  have  no  place  in  the  physical  universe.  But  that  is  a  ver- 
bal resource.  Calling  them  by  a  new  name  doesn't  solve  the  mys- 
tery. They  certainly  seem,  besides,  to  be  effects  of  admittedly 
physical  causes.  Whatever  name  we  give  them,  the  mystery 
remains — how  are  they,  where  are  they,  related  to  the  physical 
world  that  science  studies?  They  are  not  those  causes,  for  they 
exist  later,  and  those  causes  may  have  ceased  to  exist  in  the  mean- 
time— not  only  the  particular  event  that  caused  the  datum, 
but  everything  that  science  calls  the  ' thing.'  They  are  not  any 
one  of  the  physical  facts  up  to  the  brain-events,  for  those  physical 
facts  have  all  ceased  to  exist  when  they  exist.  They  are  not  to  be 
found  at  any  other  place  in  the  physical  world;  and  the  assump- 
tion that  they  exist  at  some  other  definite  place  in  that  world 
(neither  the  'thing'  nor  the  brain),  as  if  by  a  triangulation  of 
forces,  leads  to  no  explanation.  The  only  relevant  physical  exist- 
ences at  the  moment  of  the  existence  of  the  data  of  perception  are 
certain  brain-events.  It  is  to  these  that  the  data  of  perception 
are  in  some  way  tied.  But  how? 

It  seems  to  me  that  there  is  but  one  explanation  of  this  situation. 
We  may  refuse  to  try  to  explain  it.  But  if  we  admit  the  right  to 
beliefs  that  offer  adequate  explanation  of  the  empirical  situation 
when  there  is  no  plausible  alternative — and  we  all  do  practically 
admit  that  right,  as  I  showed  in  §  I,  in  believing  in  our  own  past, 
in  other  people,  and  things — we  may  without  hesitation  adopt 
that  belief  which  really  explains  the  situation  we  have  described. 
That  belief  is  that  those  '  things '  in  the  world  of  science  that  we  call 
brains  would  be  found,  if  we  knew  enough  about  them,  to  be  conscious- 
nesses, or  'fields  of  data.'  What  I  call,  in  the  language  of  physical 
science,  i.e.,  very  abstractly  described,  my  brain-events,  are  in  their 
fullness  of  reality  the  very  events  which  take  place  in  my  'field,'  the 
events  of  my  'consciousness.'  This  paradoxical-sounding  theory 
will  show  itself  to  be  lacking  in  all  paradox  upon  examination, 
and  to  be  wholly  consonant  with  all  known  facts.  It  gives  us  the 
only  theory  which  fits  all  these  facts ;  the  only  theory  which  puts 
what  are  commonly  called  physical  and  psychic  facts  into  one  uni- 
verse, and  shows  how  they  jibe,  how  they  really  form  one  continu- 
ous universe. 


23 


III.     CONSCIOUSNESS  AS  THE  BRAIN  IN  ITSELF 

The  first  objection  commonly  raised  against  the  theory  that 
consciousness  is  what  the  brain  is  in  itself,  is  that  brain  and  con- 
sciousness are  obviously  utterly  different  things.*  In  reply 
we  may  say,  first,  that  there  is  nothing  in  perception  to  make 
against  the  theory.  The  perception-data  that  we  have  when  we 
perceive  a  brain  are  obviously  different  from  the  consciousness 
that  is  correlated  with  that  brain.  But  that  does  not  in  the  least 
indicate  that  that  brain  may  not  have  in  itself,  for  itself,  the  qual- 
ities of  consciousness,  and  those  qualities  alone.  We  are  not  as- 
serting that  the  brain  as  perceived  has  those  qualities;  the  brain 
as  perceived  has  the  qualities  of  our  perceptions,  in  other  words 
is  a  part  of  our  perception-data.  The  brain  itself  does  not  get 
into  our  experience  at  all  except  in  this  reflected  way;  it  exists  out 
there,  separated  from  the  perceiver  by  the  sether-wave-eye-opti- 
cal-nerve-mechanism ;  what  its  nature  is  in  itself  perception  can- 
not tell  us. 

But,  it  is  said,  I  perceive  that  my  very  data  of  perception  exist 
out  there,  not  in  my  brain;  and  since  it  is  these  very  data  which 
we  are  agreeing  to  call  (together  with  the  'subjective'  data)  my 
consciousness,  is  it  not  clear  that  my  consciousness  is  not  my  brain? 
But,  again,  the  things  exist  'out  there/  certainly,  and  not  in  my 
brain.  Yet  the  qualities  that  my  perceptions  of  those  things 
have  exist  'here/  I  really  move  about  among  and  react  upon 
things  which  are  outside  of  me;  but  the  visual  and  tactile  quali- 
ties which  they  have  for  me  exist  in  me.  'My  consciousness'  is 
a  name  for  my  perception-data  (or  for  the  relation  that  exists  be- 
tween them,  if  any  one  prefers);  but  these  perception-qualities 
are  effects  of  the  things,  they  reveal  the  things,  they  are  not  the 
things.  The  very  out-there-ness  of  my  visual  data  is  a  visual 
quality,  produced  by  a  well-known  optical  mechanism,  which 

*  It  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  we  are  accepting  that  usage  of  the  term  'consciousness* 
according  to  which  it  is  equivalent  to  'the  given  set  of  data.'  We  mean  by  it  no  substance  or 
kind  of  stuff  contrasted  with  matter;  we  mean  by  'my '  consciousness  simply  'these  data  present 
together,'  and  by  'your'  consciousness  'those  data  present  together.'  Some  of  the  data  in 
each  consciousness  are  what  are  commonly  called  'subjective'  data — ideas,  wishes,  dreams,  etc., 
others  are  what  we  have  called  '  perception-data.' 


24 

stands  to  us  for  the  real  out-there-ness  in  which  the  things  them- 
selves abide,  but  is  a  quality  of  my  data,  produced  at  this  end  of 
the  causal  chain. 

The  trouble  is,  we  think  of  our  brains  as  a  mass  of  gray  matter, 
forgetting  that  that  is  but  a  perception  of  the  brain,  a  set  of  data 
that  would  exist  if  some  one  could  perceive  my  brain — but  would 
exist  at  his  end  of  the  causal  chain,  as  a  part  of  his  consciousness. 
Again,  we  think  of  our  brains  as  small,  whereas  our  consciousness 
seems  to  sweep  over  a  wide  territory  and  even  to  reach  out  and 
grasp  the  stars.  We  need  to  distinguish.  Our  consciousness  does 
reveal  such  a  world,  and  we  live  in  it,  we  think  of  it,  rather  than 
of  our  consciousness  itself,  which  exists  in  the  small  brain-tract. 
It  is  a  difficult  discrimination  for  one  to  make  who  has  not  ana- 
lyzed carefully  the  given  situation.  Let  us  therefore  present  the 
situation,  as  it  certainly  is,  apart  from  all  theory,  in  a  diagram. 


Let  (a)  represent  a  star  (in  itself),  (b)  an  aether-wave  (in  itself), 
(c)  an  optical  disturbance  (in  itself),  (d)  a  nerve- wave  (in  itself), 
(e)  a  brain-event  (in  itself).  At  (or  at  least  approximately  at) 
the  instant  when  (e)  takes  place,  another  event  occurs  which  finds 
no  place  on  this  diagram,  namely,  the  existence  of  a  certain  per- 
ception-datum, a  twinkling  point  of  light.  Because  it  occurs 
simultaneously  with  (e),  and  is  therefore  generally  spoken  of  by 
psychologists  as  'correlated'  with  (e),  let  us  call  it  (E).  Now  it 
is  clear  that  the  star  and  the  brain  are  not  in  the  same  place,  if  we 
mean  by  'the  star'  the  fact  (a).  But  if  we  mean  by  the  star  the 
fact  (E),  there  is  nothing  whatever  against  the  supposition;  there 
is,  instead,  this  in  its  favor,  that  (E)  exists  when  (e)  exists,  not 
when  (a),  (b),  (c),  or  (d)  exists. 


25 

Now  suppose  another  observer  is  watching  my  brain  while  I 
am  alive — it  is  theoretically  possible.  He  sees  a  lot  of  gray  matter, 
but  no  star-datum,  no  (E),  there.  Yes,  but  the  situation  is  ex- 
actly parallel,  we  must  remember,  to  the  sight  of  the  star.  The 
star  is  (a),  the  sight  of  the  star,  the  star-datum,  is  E.  So,  the 
brain-event  is  (e),  the  brain-event-datum  is — let  us  call  it  (P). 
It  occurs  not  at  the  instant  when  (e)  and  (E)  occur,  but  at  a  later 
instant,  after  (m),  (n),  and  (o)  have  occurred,  and  when  (p),  the 
brain-event  in  the  observer's  brain,  is  occurring. 

In  all  this  there  is  absolutely  no  theory.  It  is  a  plain  descrip- 
tion of  the  empirical  situation.  It  shows  us  that  there  is  noth- 
ing in  perception  to  militate  against  our  theory,  which  consists, 
so  far,  just  of  one  point,  the  identification  of  (e)  and  (E),  of  (p) 
and  (P),  etc. 

There  is  nothing  in  perception  to  militate  against  it.  But  does 
not  physical  science,  which  aims  to  be  a  knowledge  of  things 
as  they  are  in  themselves,  militate  against  our  identification- 
theory?  No.  We  have  explained  that  by  identifying  the  two  we 
mean  that  the  physical  description  of  the  thing  is  true  of  it  but  is 
incomplete;  that  the  thing  in  its  fullness  is  what  we  find  it  to  be 
at  first  hand.  Science  describes  brain-events  as  complexes  of 
motions  of  almost  infinitesimal  units.  What  these  units  are  we 
never  learn;  they  are  the  units  that  make  up  things,  they  are 
given  a  name,  that  is  all.  They  move  in  certain  ways;  their 
movements  are  correlated  with  one  another  and  with  the  moving 
'waves'  between  them  which  we  call  aether-waves.  So  they  are 
sometimes  called  'centers  of  energy.'  But  ' energy,'  in  the  physi- 
cal sense,  is  nothing  ascertainable  but  motion,  actual  or  potential, 
i.e.,  motion  which  is  occurring,  or  will  occur  under  given  circum- 
stances. ^Ether-waves  are  motions  of  something  in  between  the 
units  that  we  call  atoms  or  electrons;  but  when  we  ask,  motions 
of  what,  science  cannot  tell  us.  Motion  is  change  in  space  in  time. 
Our  whole  scientific  knowledge  can  be  put — and  it  is  the  aim  of 
science  so  to  put  it — in  terms  of  space-time  changes  of  the  units 
of  existence.  Scientific  formulae  do  often  of  course  speak  in  terms 
of  qualities,  color,  hardness,  weight,  etc.  In  so  far  as  they  do  this 
they  are  still  speaking  of  things  in  terms  of  our  perceptions  of 
them,  they  have  not  pushed  their  analysis  to  its  goal.  That  goal 
is  the  reduction  of  all  scientific  knowledge  to  the  terms  we  have  in- 


26 

dicated.  So  far  as  science  completes  its  work  it  becomes  a  de- 
scription of  the  space-time  changes  of  undescribed  units — a  de- 
scription of  relations,  not  of  qualities. 

There  is  nothing  then  in  our  scientific  knowledge  of  (e)  to  for- 
bid our  believing  that  when  fully  known  it  is  (E).  All  we  actually 
know  of  (e)  is  that  it  is  some  space-time  change  of  some  of  the 
units  of  existence  at  that  point  in  the  world;  a  change,  presum- 
ably, that  could  be  described,  if  we  knew  enough  about  it,  in 
terms  of  natural  law,  i.e.,  by  the  same  formulae  that  serve  to 
describe  already  analyzed  changes.  There  is  nothing  to  show 
that  the  formula  by  which  we  should  describe  this  event  if  we 
knew  enough  about  it  would  not  apply  also  to  the  event  (E). 
Our  perception-data  are  exceedingly  complex  and  continually  in 
change.  Physical  formulae  are  highly  abstract  and- inadequate 
truths  about  things.  They  may  be  true  of  these  perception- 
data;  they  may  describe  the  structure  and  relative  changes  of  the 
elements  of  these  complex  data.  Physical  science  may  give  us  the 
skeleton,  of  which  the  flesh  and  blood  are  the  qualities  of  the  data. 
It  is  the  qualitative  aspect  that  strikes  our  attention  most  when 
we  have  the  data  at  first  hand;  .they  may  nevertheless  have  a 
definite  skeleton,  and  physical  knowledge  of  brain-events  may  be 
a  knowledge  of  that  skeleton. 

It  will  be  objected  that  brain-events  are  many  and  the  total 
conscious  event  at  the  same  time  is  one.  If  we  use  the  language 
we  have  clung  to,  however,  and  instead  of  consciousness  say  'set, 
or  field,  of  data/  it  will  at  once  be  seen  that  tho  the  field  is  one 
field,  the  data  are  many.  The  total  brain-process  too  is  in  a  very 
real  sense  a  unity;  the  brain  is  an  organic  whole  of  interrelated 
and  mutually  influencing  parts.  It  is  its  unity  of  diverse  elements 
that  makes  it  an  effective  instrument  in  the  organism's  success- 
ful life.  So  a  given  consciousness,  or  field  of  data,  is  a  unity  of 
diverse  elements.  All  the  simultaneous  elements  within  the  field 
exist  together,  in  the  peculiar  relation  of  togetherness  that  con- 
stitutes the  field;  but  these  elements  are  manifold.  In  a  sense,  a 
consciousness  at  a  given  moment  is  one;  in  another  sense  it  is 
exceedingly  complex.  The  shades  and  variations  in  our  field  of 
present-data  may  quite  reasonably  be  judged  as  numerous  as  the 
variations  in  the  complex  brain-process  which,  we  say,  is  the 
physical  name  for  it.  Physical  brain-process  knowledge  is,  when 


27 

interpreted,  a  set  of  formulae  describing  in  abstract  terms  these 
variations  in  a  given  field.  If  we  clothe  this  pattern  with  the 
qualities  which  the  data  have,  we  shall  have  a  complete  descrip- 
tion of  the  events  in  the  given  field.  But  physical  science  can- 
not ascertain  those  qualities;  it  must  be  content  with  an  abstract 
relational  knowledge. 

If  then  our  identification  of  consciousness  with  brain  as  it 
exists  for  itself  is  not  controverted  by  the  facts  of  perception  or 
of  science,  what  are  the  positive  grounds  for  making  it? 

The  first  ground  is  that  it  is  the  simplest  assumption  which 
does  away  with  the  mystery.  Without  some  metaphysical  theory 
we  are  left  with  our  E's  and  P's  dangling  at  the  moments  when 
our  e's  and  p's  exist,  but  with  no  place  in  the  world-order;  and 
their  relation  to  the  e's  and  p's,  indeed,  their  existence  at  all, 
(since  they  are  so  different  from  anything  we  know  of  the  pre- 
ceding physical  events)  remains  a  baffling  mystery.  We  have, 
as  the  actual  situation,  the  following  facts,  forming  a  causal  chain : 

a  b  c  d  J  e  e'  e"    )  f  g 


f  e  e'  e"    1  f 
\  E  E'  E"  ) 


Here  (e),  (e'),  (e")  are  three  succeeding  brain-events :  an  agitation 
in  the  optical  tract,  a  current  passing  over  to  the  arm-motor- 
tract,  and  an  agitation  there;  (f)  is  a  nerve-wave  to  the  arm, 
and  (g)  a  movement  of  the  arm  (say  to  pick  up  an  opera  glass 
wherewith  to  look  at  the  star  to  better  advantage).  When  (e) 
exists,  (E),  the  star-datum,  exists;  when  (e')  exists,  (E'),  the 
forming  of  the  desire  to  pick  up  the  opera  glass,  exists;  when  (e") 
exists,  (E"),  the  will  to  pick  up  the  glass,  exists.  The  physical 
chain  could  apparently  take  care  of  itself.  What  are  (E,  E',  E") 
doing  there?  How  are  they  related  to  (e,  e',  e")?  Why,  it  is  all 
explained  if  we  make  the  simple  assumption  that  the  e's  are  the 
E's.  We  don't  know  of  two  sets  of  realities  there.  Learning  of  the 
facts  which  exist  then  in  two  different  ways,  we  call  them  by 
different  names;  but  that  does  not  imply  that  they  are  different 
facts. 

Another  mj-stery  which  the  assumption  explains  is  that  of  the 
relation  of  the  'subjective'  data  to  bodily  events  and  to  the 
world.  If  perception-data  are  the  realities  described  by  science 
as  certain  brain-events,  then  we  may  likewise  assume  that  ideas, 


28 

wishes,  resolves,  dreams,  etc.,  are  the  realities  underlying  other 
brain-events,  those,  namely,  which  are  'centrally/  not  'periphe- 
rally' excited.  The  evidence  is  ample  that  none  of  these  data 
exist  without  definite  brain-events  'correlated'  with  them.  If 
these  data  are  those  brain-events  in  themselves,  then  the  whole 
field  of  data  is  the  whole  brain-process  in  itself,  and  the  relation 
of  'mind'  and  'body'  is  explained. 

Still  another  important  set  of  facts  which  the  assumption 
explains  is  that  relating  to  the  causal  efficacy  of  conscious  states 
and  brain  motions.  Physiology  tells  us  that  the  cause  of  (f) 
is  (e"),  which  is  caused  by  (e'),  which  is  caused  by  (e),  which  is 
caused  by  (d).  But  direct  experience  seems  to  show  that  (d) 
causes  (E),  that  (E'),  that  (E"),  and  that  (f).  The  will  to  pick 
up  the  opera  glass  at  least  supposes  itself  to  be  the  cause  of  the 
arm  movement.  On  our  theory  both  causal  chains  are  real  and 
not  illusory.  For  it  is  only  one  chain  of  events.  With  fuller 
knowledge  the  e's  can  all  be  written  E's. 

Finally,  there  is  one  significant  fact  that  points  directly  to 
our  assumption.  Brain-events,  being  definite  effects  of  outer 
things,  vary  concomitantly  with  them,  and  are  thus,  in  some 
degree,  representative  of  them.  But  the  data  of  perception  are 
also  representative  of  things,  as  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  they 
reveal  those  things  to  us,  serve  to  steer  us  about  among  them. 
When  they  are  not  representative  of  them  they  are  illusions. 
This  difference  between  true  perception  and  illusion,  an  empirical 
difference,  points  to  the  truth  that  true  perceptions  are  really 
representative  of  outer  reality.  We  have  thus  two  representa- 
tions of  outer  reality  produced  simultaneously.  This  points 
to  their  identity;  and  their  identity  explains  the  desperate 
problem  of  epistemology.  How  can  conscious  facts  represent 
reality?  Through  being  effects  of  it,  produced,  as  the  brain- 
events  are  seen  to  be  produced,  through  the  mechanism  of  per- 
ception. 

I  hold  then  that  just  as  it  is  legitimate  to  believe  in  the  exist- 
ence of  the  universe,  because  that  assumption  explains  the 
peculiarities  of  the  data  within  a  given  field,  so  it  is  legitimate 
to  believe  that  consciousness  is  the  brain-in-itself,  because  that 
assumption  explains  the  peculiarities  of  the  empirical  situation. 


29 


IV.     THE  NATURE  OF  THINGS  IN  THEMSELVES 

We  now  have  a  theory  which  explains  the  relation  of  brain 
and  consciousness;  and  with  that  as  a  tool  we  may  attack  the 
problem  of  the  nature  which  things  have  in  themselves.  What 
means  have  we  for  solving  that  problem?  In  the  first  place,  we 
have  our  perception-data.  But  the  qualities  which  compose  them 
exist,  so  far  as  we  know,  only  at  the  brain-point  in  the  world- 
order,  separated  spatially  by  the  whole  mechanism  of  percep- 
tion and  temporally  by  the  interval  the  causal  process  requires 
to  traverse  that  mechanism  from  the  things  perceived.  We 
cannot  assume  without  further  evidence  that  things  have  in 
themselves  similar  qualities.  Our  perception-data  have  un- 
doubtedly some  formal  correspondence  with  things,  else  they 
would  not  serve  to  steer  us  about  among  them  successfully; 
they  are,  as  we  say,  representative  of  them.  But  this  repre- 
sentative function  is  compatible  with  a  totally  different  quali- 
tative nature.  Hence  there  is  nothing  in  perception  to  indicate 
the  qualitative  nature  that  things  have  in  themselves. 

A  further  consideration  shows  that  it  is  impossible  that  more 
than  a  very  few  of  our  perception-data  should  be  copies  of 
the  qualities  of  things  themselves.  For  those  perception-data 
which  are  perceptions  of  one  and  the  same  thing  vary  indefinitely 
themselves.  The  copy-theory  of  perception  is  conclusively  dis- 
proved by  a  comparison  of  the  qualitative  differences  of  dif- 
ferent people's  perceptions  of  the  same  object.  Suppose  a  hun- 
dred people  are  looking  at  a  tree,  i.e.,  in  exacter  language, 
are  having  visible  perception-data  representative  of  the  tree. 
No  two  sets  of  perception-data  are  exactly  alike.  Those  who 
are  near  the  tree  have  a  bright-green-tree-datum,  those  farther 
away  have  a  bluish-green-tree-datum,  those  who  are  color-blind 
huve  a  drab-tree-datum.  Those  who  are  near  have  a  large-tree- 
datum,  those  who  are  far  have  a  small-tree-datum.  Since  no 
two  heads  are  in  the  same  place,  no  two  see  the  tree  from  the  same 
angle  of  vision;  it  is  impossible  that  the  datum  which  any  one 
has,  and  which  is  for  him  the  tree,  can  be  precisely  like  that  which 
any  one  else  has.  The  differences  may  be  extreme,  as  when  a 


30 

man  is  miles  away,  and  his  tree-datum  is  but  a  tiny  blur.  Now 
of  all  these  qualitatively  different  data  only  one  datum  can  be 
a  copy  of  the  tree  as  it  is  in  itself.  Which  one?  Is  there  any 
more  reason  for  supposing  that  the  tree  in  itself  is  green — since 
through  a  mechanism  which  includes  an  optical  retina  of  a  certain 
sort  it  produced  an  effect  which  has  the  quality  'green' — than  for 
supposing  that  the  tree  in  itself  is  drab — since  through  a  mechan- 
ism which  includes  an  optical  retina  of  another  sort  it  produces 
an  effect  which  has  the  quality  'drab'?  We  say  the  latter  retina 
is  abnormal  and  distorts  the  real  nature  of  the  tree.  But  in 
truth  all  that  the  word  'abnormal'  can  mean  is  'unusual,'  or  else 
'unfitting  us  for  dealing  with  the  object.'  The  man  who  sees 
the  tree  drab,  however,  is  as  well  fitted  to  deal  with  it  as  he  who 
sees  it  green.  The  fact  that  fewer  men  have  a  drab-datum  than 
have  a  green-datum  proves  nothing  at  all.  And  if  we  merely 
take  one  man's  experience  alone,  the  same  tree  in  itself  cannot 
be  both  bright  green  and  bluish  green.  Which  perception- 
datum  is  a  'copy'  of  the  tree,  the  bright  green  or  the  bluish 
green  datum? 

There  is  a  phrase  which  seems  to  meet  the  situation.  It  is 
said,  the  tree  has  all  these  qualities  at  once.  It  is  bright  green 
in  relation  to  a  near-by  observer,  bluish  in  relation  to  a  far-off 
observer,  drab  in  relation  to  a  color-blind  observer,  etc.  But 
what  can  this  ingenious  phrase  mean  on  analysis?  Either  of 
two  things.  Either  that  the  tree  itself  has  all  these  contra- 
dictory qualities  at  the  same  time  and  place — which  is  a  logical 
impossibility;  or  that  it  is  of  such  a  nature  as  to  produce  these 
different  perception-data  through  the  different  media  interven- 
ing, which  is  our  contention.  That  the  former  possibility  is  not 
illogical  is  sometimes  urged.  It  is  pointed  out  that  a  man  may 
be  a  father  in  relation  to  one  man  and  a  son  in  relation  to 
another  at  the  same  time,  a  nephew  to  a  third,  etc.  But  these 
are  but  shorthand  ways  of  referring  to  facts  not  existing  as  quali- 
ties in  the  man.  We  mean  to  say  that  the  man  was  begotten, 
years  ago,  by  this  other  man,  is  what  he  is  today  on  account  of 
that  fact,  among  others.  In  his  turn  he  has  begotten  a  son. 
The  facts  are  clearly  denoted  by  the  words  'father'  and  'son'; 
there  is  no  contradiction  between  the  two  sets  of  facts.  And 
there  is  no  contradiction  in  a  tree's  being  green  and  drab  at  the 


31 

same  time  if  we  mean  that  it  has  produced  and  is  of  such  a  nature 
as  to  produce  the  green  effect  through  one  mechanism  and  the 
drab  effect  through  another.  Or  we  might  mean  that  part  of 
it  is  green  and  part  of  it  is  drab — the  two  qualities  can  easily 
coexist  side  by  side.  But  this  man's  tree-datum  is  all  green 
(leaving  aside  the  gray  trunk,  etc.),  that  man's  is  all  drab. 
Both  cannot  be  accurate  copies  of  the  same  original.  You  can 
picture  a  man,  and  label  the  picture  A's  father;  you  can  picture 
the  same  man  and  call  the  picture  B's  son;  you  would  have 
exactly  similar  pictures.  Because  'father'  and  'son'  denote 
relations,  not  qualities.  You  cannot  picture  a  drab  tree  and  a 
green  tree  and  have  exactly  similar  pictures,  because  l  green '  and 
'drab'  are  not  relations  but  qualities. 

What  our  various  perception-data  which  reveal  the  same  thing 
have  in  common  is  not  a  group  of  qualities  which  copy  the  quali- 
ties of  the  original,  but  a  certain  formal  correspondence  with 
one  another,  a  similar  place  in  that  universal  order  into  which 
all  our  perception-data  fit,  and  a  similar  function  in  directing  our 
action.  It  is  exactly  such  a  formal .  knowledge,  such  a  knowl- 
edge of  the  place  of  a  thing  in  the  whole  order  of  things,  and  of 
the  function  it  will  fulfil  in  the  general  interplay  of  things,  that 
science  gives  us.  Scientific  knowledge  is  but  an  extension  of 
perception-knowledge,  the  difference  being  that  our  perception- 
knowledge  is  clothed  with  a  qualitative  nature,  which  science,  in 
its  ultimate  analyses,  strips  from  them,  presenting  in  succinct 
formulae  that  part  of  our  perceptions  and  their  possible  exten- 
sions which  is  really  knowledge  of  the  things — the  formal  part,. 

Of  course,  as  we  think  of  the  universe,  we  clothe  it  in  our  mind's 
eye  with  the  qualities  which  our  perception-data  have.  It  is  a 
natural  and  instinctive  case  of  the  pathetic  fallacy.  And  in 
spite  of  our  philosophic  insight  we  shall  go  on  thinking  of  the 
world  in  terms  of  our  perceptions  of  it.  It  is  necessary  that  we 
should.  What  matters  to  us,  except  in  our  moments  of  intel- 
lectual curiosity,  is  not  the  inner  nature  of  things,  but  our  own 
potential  experiences.  Whenever  we  experience  the  world,  it  is 
bound  to  be  through  the  medium  of  our  sense-organs;  and  the 
world  for  us  will  always  be,  in  our  practical  life,  a  world  with 
such  qualities  as  our  perception-data  have.  None  the  less  real, 
if  hidden  forever  from  our  gaze,  is  the  fullness  of  life  which  things 


32 

have  in  themselves,  on  the  other  side  of  our  perception-mechan- 
ism. 

Our  scientific  knowledge  then  cannot  reveal  to  us  the  qualities 
which  things  have  in  themselves,  any  more  than  our  perceptions 
can.  Science  is  but  a  fitting  together  of  our  perceptions  and  a 
revealing  of  their  pattern,  the  order  which  they  follow,  which 
must  be  the  order  of  the  world  of  things,  because  we  are  able 
by  our  knowledge  of  it  to  predict  with  precision  future  changes  in 
things.  We  must  not  be  confused  by  the  thought  that  science 
reduces  everything  to  atoms  in  motion.  Atoms  (or  whatever 
we  call  the  ultimate  units  of  matter)  we  picture  to  ourselves  as 
hard  little  grayish  bits  of  matter.  The  qualitative  nature  of  things 
composed  of  constellations  of  such  atoms  is  obviously  very  differ- 
ent from  the  qualitative  nature  of  our  perceptions  of  those  same 
things;  yet  there  seems  to  be  a  fairly  definite  qualitative  nature 
there.  But  we  are  completely  mistaken  in  picturing  atoms  as 
hard  grayish  bits  of  matter.  The  prime-atoms  (which  seem  to 
be  what  are  called  'electrons'  nowadays)  are  not  known  to  have 
any  qualities  whatsoever.  .  They  have  mass,  but  that  is  their 
quantitative  aspect;  they  have  inertia,  velocity,  they  attract, 
repel,  etc.,  but  these  are  all  descriptions  of  their  motions  and  the 
motions  which  they  invoke  in  one  another.  In  the  electrons  we 
seem  to  have  reached  the  units  of  matter,  because  they  seem  to 
be  identical  in  mass  with  one  another.  They  are  simply  'units 
of  matter,'  'centers  of  force,'  'points  of  reaction,'  etc.  We  know 
nothing  of  their  qualitative  nature. 

Indeed,  a  study  of  the  causes  which  produce  all  our  percep- 
tion-qualities seems  to  show  that  those  qualities  cannot  exist  in 
the  things.  Take  light,  i.e.,  brightness,  for  example.  Light 
is  to  the  physicist  a  certain  sether-vibration  proceeding  from 
certain  changes  of  motion  in  certain  electrons  which  are  flying 
about  in  material  bodies.  These  electrons  which  produce  light- 
waves are  but  a  very  few  among  the  myriad  units  which  make  up  a 
material  body.  The  light,  or  brightness,  which  is  a  quality  of 
our  perception-data  is  the  effect  of  those  aether-vibrations, 
through  the  eye  on  the  brain.  Are  we  to  suppose  that  the  aether- 
pulses  have  the  quality  of  brightness  too?  That  the  electrons 
whose  sharp  turns  produce  these  pulses  have  the  quality  of 
brightness?  Even  if  we  were  to  make  that  supposition,  far  the 


33 

greater  part  of  the  mass  of  the  body  is  left  without  the  quality  of 
brightness. 

So  it  is  with  the  other  qualities  we  ascribe  to  things.  Heat 
in  the  things  themselves  is,  so  far  as  science  tells  us,  but  a  more  or 
less  rapid  motion  of  molecules — not  at  all  that  quality  which  we 
mean  by  'heat.'  So  with  hardness.  Things  themselves  are 
not  hard  solid  bodies,  they  are  great  voids,  like  the  open  sky, 
with  exquisitely  tiny  units,  very  far  apart  from  one  another, 
flying  about  in  them,  and  tiny  lines  of  sether-vibration  radiating 
between.  Physically,  hardness  is  the  fact  that  other  bodies  do 
not  readily  push  into  and  distort  these  constellations  of  units. 
What  we  feel  as  hardness,  this  quality  that  we  get  in  our  experi- 
ence when  we  push  against  certain  bodies,  is  a  fact  that  exists, 
so  far  as  we  know,  only  when  our  muscular  sense  has  sent  a  nerve- 
wave  to  the  brain.  No  doubt  this  physical  knowledge  of 
motions  is  incomplete  knowledge,  but  there  is  nothing  in  this 
knowledge  to  indicate  that  we  can  legitimately  fill  it  out  by  read- 
ing back  into  the  things  the  effects  produced  when  the  influences 
radiated  from  them  strike  us. 

We  must  not  forget  that  we  are  removed  by  a  number  of  steps 
from  things.  The  nature  of  the  thing  itself  is  described 
abstractly  by  science  in  terms  of  the  motions  of  tiny  units;  the 
aether-vibration  is  something  quite  different;  the  optical  dis- 
turbance quite  another  sort  of  fact;  the  nerve-wave  still  different, 
and  the  brain-event  different  from  that.  How  could  a  copy  of 
the  thing  itself  be  produced  through  such  a  set  of  changes!  Just 
as  a  picture  is  produced  on  a  photographic  plate  through  a  partly 
similar  set  of  changes?  Exactly.  But  a  picture  is  not  a  copy 
of  what  it  pictures.  Is  a  picture  of  you  a  copy  of  you?  It  does 
not  even  copy  the  softness  of  your  flesh,  or  clothes,  the  weight 
your  body  has,  its  heat,  or  many  another  quality  which  an 
observer  can  perceive  your  body  to  have.  Still  less  does  it 
copy  your  real  inner  nature.  Much  as  a  photograph  pictures  a 
body  do  our  perception-data  picture  things.  If  you  print  your 
picture  on  solio  paper  you  get  one  kind  of  representation;  if 
you  print  it  on  sepia  paper  you  get  another  kind;  if  you  use  a 
small  camera  you  get  one  kind,  if  a  large,  another;  if  you  use  a 
red  glass  lens  one  kind,  if  a  green  glass,  another,  etc.  Your 
pictures  will  have  in  common  only  their  formal  correspondence 
with  the  body  pictured.  So  it  is  with  our  perceptions. 


34 

But  there  is  another  important  set  of  considerations.  Close 
study  of  our  sense-organs  and  brain  makes  it  apparent  that  the 
qualities  of  our  perception-data  depend  upon  their  nature,  while 
their  form  depends  to  some  extent  on  sense-organ  facts,  on 
sether-wave  facts,  on  nerve-wave  and  brain  facts.  For  example, 
I  shake  my  eyes,  and  have  a  moving-tree-datum.  I  am  sure 
however  that  the  tree  itself  does  not  move.  How  could  the 
shaking  of  my  eyes  make  a  tree  itself  move  far  away  from  me? 
Again,  a  straight  stick  partly  in  water  looks  bent  to  me.  The 
aether- waves  have  been  bent  by  the  water — but  I  know  the  stick 
itself  is  straight.  I  can  verify  that  belief  by  feeling  of  the  stick. 
Again,  if  the  nerve  between  my  eye  and  brain  is  broken  I  see 
nothing  at  all.  But  I  believe  that  things  themselves  still  exist. 
We  have  to  disentangle  the  causes  that  reside  in  the  thing  from 
the  causes  that  reside  in  the  mechanism  of  perception.  And  we 
see  that  all  the  qualities  of  our  data,  everything  except  a  certain 
aspect,  which  we  can  disentangle,  of  their  order,  or  pattern, 
depends  upon  the  particular  nature  of  that  mechanism. 

Thus  if  our  sense-organs  were  different  we  should  have  quite 
different  data.  The  world  for  us  would  be  very  different,  and  we 
should  picture  it  in  our  mind's  eye  very  differently  from  the  way 
we  do  picture  it.  If  our  eyes  were  made  to  respond  to  the  waves 
that  affect  our  heat-sense,  and  our  heat-nerve-organs  were  made 
to  respond  to  light-waves,  we  should  have  visual  data  when  we 
now  have  the  quality  of  hotness,  and  feel  hot  when  we  now  see. 
The  entire  visible  world  would  be  but  a  series  of  variations  in 
temperature  to  us,  and  we  should  see  the  differences  in  the  heat 
of  different  parts  of  our  body  as  a  picture!  Or,  if  the  nerves 
from  the  fingers  were  to  be  spliced  to  the  optical  nerves,  we 
should  have  color-  and  light-sensations  when  we  feel  of  things; 
with  closed  eyes  we  should  literally  see  a  world  through  our 
fingers.  But  it  would  be  a  very  different  world  from  that  we 
actually  see;  for  the  stimuli  to  the  tactile  organs  are  different 
from  the  stimuli  to  the  optical  organs.  We  might  learn  to  get 
along  in  our  new  world  as  conveniently  as  we  get  along  in  our 
actual  picture-world,  both  worlds  being  only  pictures,  in  different 
materials  and  with  different  pigments,  of  the  actual  universe. 
In  such  another  picture-world  from  ours  do  the  animals  live, 
no  doubt.  Who  can  imagine  what  the  world  is  like  to  dogs,  for 


35 

whom  scent  is  the  great  sense?  Yet  they  are  as  well  guided  for 
their  purposes  by  their  perception-data  as  we  by  ours.  How 
foolish  then  to  suppose  that  the  particular  set  of  perception- 
organs  which  we  men,  in  this  particular  stage  of  our  physical 
evolution,  possess,  happens  to  produce  a  set  of  perception-data 
which  copy  the  real  qualities  of  things! 

That  they  do  not  copy  the  qualities  of  things  is  finally  proved 
by  a  comparison  of  brain-events  with  the  outer  physical  events 
which  cause  them;  there  is  no  doubt  a  concomitant  variation 
between  them,  but  there  is  no  close  similarity.  In  so  far,  and  only 
in  so  far,  as  there  is  similarity  between  the  two  events,  as  physi- 
cally described,  can  we  infer  a  similarity  in  their  reality. 

We  have  in  all  this  erected  no  dualism  of  matter  and  mind. 
My  mind  is  just — these  data  which  exist  together.  Other  minds 
are  other  similar  sets  of  data  existing  at  other  points — namely, 
where,  in  physical  terms,  other  brains  exist.  Matter  is  just — all 
those  other  realities  which  exist  in  the  spaces  between  the  'minds.' 
There  is  no  reason  why  we  should  not  suppose  all  these  realities 
homogeneous  in  substance — whatever  meaning  that  phrase 
may  have.  Indeed,  the  teaching  of  evolution  makes  it  plain 
that  all  these  complex  realities  have  evolved  out  of  simpler  stuff. 
Brains  are  made  up  of  the  same  matter  that  makes  up  the  rest  of 
the  universe.  So,  in  the  fuller  language  of  direct  experience, 
consciousness  is  made  up  of  the  same  stuff  that  makes  up  the  rest 
of  the  world.  Whether  we  call  that  stuff  psychic  or  material  is  a 
mere  matter  of  convenience.  There  is  no  legitimate  antithesis 
between  the  two  terms.  We  shall  call  reality  psychic  if  we  wish 
to  indicate  that  it  is  homogeneous  in  nature  with  consciousness; 
we  shall  call  it  material  if  we  wish  to  indicate  that  it  is  the  reality 
which  lies  behind  (so  to  speak)  our  perception-data,  the  reality 
that  we  point  to  and  call  matter,  the  reality  which  physical  science 
calls  matter.  All  our  physical  knowledge  is  true  of  it.  More 
also  is  true  of  it,  but  that  more  we  must  learn  indirectly. 

One  great  advantage  of  our  theory  thus  is  that  it  makes  the 
origin  and  development  of  consciousness  a  natural  event  in  evo- 
lution. Consciousness  is  not  a  new  kind  of  existence,  suddenly 
appearing  on  the  scene,  when  matter  has  reached  the  degree  of 
organization  to  which  we  give  the  name  of  brain.  It  is  that  brain, 
being  naturally  developed  by  the  same  laws  which  hold  true  of  all 


36 

physical  evolution.  Everything  is  material,  everything  is  mental, 
(or  sub-mental,  if  we  take  'mind'  as  equivalent  to  'consciousness,' 
the  reality  symbolized  by  a  brain),  according  to  the  terms  in 
which  we  describe  it.  Our  theory  may,  as  Dr.  Prince  well  says, 
be  called  panpsychism  or  panmaterialism,  according  to  which 
aspect  of  the  truth  needs  emphasis. 

Finally,  then,  if  neither  perception  nor  science  can  tell  us  how 
like  or  unlike  the  qualities  of  things  are  to  our  perception-data, 
what  means  have  we  of  inferring  these  qualities?  We  have  three 
possible  means.  The  first  would  be  to  note  the  exact  physical 
difference  between  a  given  brain-event,  the  preceding  nerve-event, 
sense-organ  event,  etc.,  back  to  the  physical  event  in  the  thing 
itself  which  caused  it.  We  could  thus  discover  in  physical  terms 
just  how  the  brain-event  distorts  the  event  in  the  thing  itself, 
what  is  the  'personal  equation'  which  we  must  eliminate  in  our 
description  of  the  thing.  But  physical  knowledge  is  knowledge 
only  of  the  order,  the  skeleton,  of  reality ;  how  shall  we  fill  in  this 
skeleton  with  flesh  and  blood?  Why,  our  consciousness  is  the  flesh 
and  blood  of  which  a  certain  brain-process  is  the  skeleton.  And 
when  we  have  eliminated  the  distortion-elements  from  the  brain- 
process,  if  we  eliminate  their  corresponding  conscious-elements 
we  shall  have  left  the  flesh  and  blood  which  corresponds  to  that 
aspect  of  the  physical  event  in  the  brain  which  is  a  copy  of  the 
event  in  the  thing  itself. 

There  is  no  need,  however,  if  we  only  wish  to  learn  the  nature 
of  the  things  at  the  other  end  of  the  perception-mechanism,  to 
take  account  of  that  mechanism  at  all.  What  we  need  to  do  is  to 
compare  the  event  '  out  there '  with  the  event  f  here '  as  physically 
described,  and  then  use  the  equation  which  Clifford  suggested. 
As  the  physical  nature  of  other  things  is  to  the  physical  nature  of 
the  brain,  so  is  the  full  nature  of  other  things  to  the  full  nature  of 
the  brain — i.e.,  to  consciousness.  In  another  form,  Reality  :  its 
physical  description  :  :  consciousness  :  the  physical  description  of 
the  brain-process. 

Impracticable  this  method  certainly  is  at  present,  with  the 
meagre  knowledge  of  brains  and  of  other  material  events  which 
we  as  yet  possess.  The  best  hope  for  immediate  results  seems  to 
lie  in  reading  the  minds  of  other  people  through  a  comparison  of 
their  brain-events  with  ours;  a  reading  of  the  minds  of  idiots  and 


37 

children  and  a  study  of  all  pathological  cases.  Then  we  can 
gradually  work  down  the  scale  through  the  higher  animals  to  the 
lowest  organisms,  and  so  hope,  in  this  step  by  step  manner,  to  ap- 
proach an  insight  into  the  inner  life,  the  qualitative  nature  (the 
two  phrases  are  equivalent)  of  inorganic  matter.  The  great 
recent  increase  of  results  in  pathological  and  animal  psychology, 
and  the  still  more  recent  beginnings  of  ' plant  psychology'  point 
hopefully  to  future  conquests.  We  must  confess,  however,  that 
our  whole  theory  mast  forever  remain  a  metaphysical  theory,  a 
theory,  that  is,  that  is  essentially  unverifiable.  By  no  possible 
hook  or  crook  can  we  ever  get  into  other  things  and  have  in  our 
experience  their  inner  life,  their  qualitative  nature,  and  so  check 
our  inferences.  But  we  are  in  exactly  the  same  case  in  our  reading 
of  the  minds  of  our  dearest  friends.  And  so  we  may  hope  that  at 
some  distant  time  man  can  read,  with  practical  assurance,  the 
qualities  that  make  up  the  life  of  all  things. 

V.    THE  PECULIARITIES  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS 

The  theory  I  have  now  outlined  consists  of  two  steps,  the  iden- 
tification of  consciousness  with  brain  as  it  is  in  itself,  and  the 
attributing  to  the  rest  of  reality  a  nature  like  that  of  conscious- 
ness in  the  degree  in  which  as  physically  known  it  is  like  the  brain 
as  physical  science  describes  it.  These  two  inferences  seem  to  me 
to  be  supported  by  much  evidence  and  to  give  us  the  simplest 
theory  that  explains  the  main  known  facts  of  existence.  But  it  is 
only  the  prelude  to  a  knowledge  of  reality.  The  fruitful  task 
for  metaphysics  would  seem  to  consist  in  filling  in  the  flesh  and 
blood  throughout  the  spread  of  our  physical  knowledge,  giving  us 
in  conception  a  picture  of  what  things  are  in  themselves.  To  do 
this  we  shall  have  to  push  the  foundations  of  physics  further  than 
they  have  yet  been  pushed,  and  to  learn  much  more  of  brain  phy- 
siology than  we  now  know.  When  we  shall  have  learned  just  what 
brain-event  corresponds  to  what  quality  in  our  consciousness,  we 
shall,  by  comparing  the  different  types  of  events,  be  able  to  con- 
struct in  imagination  what  qualities  correspond  to  given  motions 
in  the  outer  world.  At  present  we  are  very  far  from  being  able 
to  carry  out  such  a  program;  and  anything  further  than  what  we 
have  said  must  be  highly  hypothetical.  But  it  may  be  worth 


38 

while  to  offer  a  few  suggestions  as  to  what  the  outcome  of  such 
investigation  may  be  in  its  salient  outlines.  We  know  enough  of 
the  difference  between  brain-events  and  outer  physical  events  to  be 
able  to  make  some  guesses  as  to  the  difference  between  conscious- 
ness and  the  rest  of  reality.  What  we  can  safely  say,  however,  is 
mostly  negative;  we  can  point  out  some  general  peculiarities  of 
the  brain-process  and  the  peculiarities  of  consciousness  that  seem 
to  correspond  thereto,  and  we  can  say  that  these  peculiarities  must 
not  be  read  into  the  nature  of  outer  reality. 

The  first  thing  to  settle  is,  just  what  tract  of  physical  events 
pictures  consciousness.  We  have  spoken  of  the  'brain-process' 
as  that  tract.  But  the  most  careful  studies  should  be  carried  on 
to  determine  exactly  what  part  of  the  physical  events  that  go 
on  within  the  skull,  and  whether  any  physical  events  beyond  the 
confines  of  the  skull,  picture  what  goes  on  within  the  field  of  con- 
sciousness. As  to  the  latter  portion  of  this  inquiry,  there  are 
not  lacking  those  who  hold  that  the  field  of  consciousness  includes 
all  the  realities  pictured  by  all  bodily  events.  The  facts  in  that 
field  corresponding  to  events  outside  the  brain  are  held  to  be 
'marginal'  facts,  a  dim  background  to  the  more  vivid  and  im- 
portant brain-event  facts.  The  argument  for  this  position  is 
that  the  human  body  is  an  organic  unit;  it  is  more  natural  to  sup- 
pose that  the  limits  of  the  field  of  consciousness  coincide  with 
the  limits  of  the  body,  which  moves  about  independently  among 
other  things,  than  that  it  coincides  with  the  limits  of  a  particular 
portion  of  that  body. 

The  evidence,  however,  makes  for  the  latter  hypothesis.  It  is 
proved  that  if  certain  definite  portions  of  the  cortex  are  removed 
or  diseased,  certain  definite  phases  of  consciousness  are  lost  or 
distorted.  It  is  not  shown  that  any  bodily  change,  amputation, 
or  injury,  affects  consciousness  except  indirectly,  through  the 
nerve-message  to  the  brain.  If  the  nerve  that  runs  from  eye  to 
brain  is  severed,  or  if  a  certain  small  tract  of  the  brain  into  which 
that  nerve-cable  runs  is  destroyed,  all  possibility  of  visual  data  in 
consciousness  is  lost,  tho  the  eye  itself  be  in  perfect  working  order. 
Contrariwise,  if  the  nerve  that  runs  from  eye  to  brain  is  stimulated 
by  electricity,  so  that  a  disturbance-message  is  carried  to  the 
brain,  the  quality  'light'  appears  in  consciousness  even  tho  the 
eyes  be  totally  blind  or  lost.  After  a  man  has  lost  a  limb  he  still 


39 

not  uncommonly  seems  to  feel  the  limb.  In  such  cases  the  nerve 
that  used  to  bring  messages  from  it  to  the  brain  is  agitated  and 
rouses  the  customary  perception-data  there.  If  the  reality  cor- 
responding to  the  body  outside  the  brain  exists  within  the  field 
of  consciousness  it  does  not  exist  as  the  perception-data  which 
make  up  the  body  in  our  consciousness,  it  can  exist  only  as  a  dim 
unnoticed  background. 

But  it  is  also  evident  that  not  even  all  brain-events  exist,  in 
their  reality,  within  the  field  of  consciousness.  There  are  the 
well-known  cases  of  split  personality,  where  two  separate  fields 
of  consciousness  exist  side  by  side,  and  all  stages  of  dissociation 
less  marked.  All  the  facts  explained  by  the  phrases  'unconscious 
cerebration'  and  'the  subconscious'  must,  on  our  theory,  have  a 
reality  of  the  same  general  nature  as  that  of  our  consciousness- 
elements;  but  they  exist  in  isolation,  without  interplay  of  in- 
fluence, until  some  moment  when  a  current  rushes  over  from  the 
isolated  group  into  the  main  field.  In  such  cases  ideas  jump  into 
our  minds  out  of  the  unknown.  Much  of  the  work  of  thinkers 
and  poets  seems  to  be  done  in  this  region  outside  the  field  of  con- 
sciousness. Ideas  ripen  and  mature  there,  and  come  to  us  in 
moments  of  relaxation;  our  energies  not  being  then  concentrated 
elsewhere,  enough  energy  out  of  our  always  limited  stock  can  be 
appropriated  by  the  subconscious  elements  to  enable  them  to 
flow  over,  as  it  were,  into  the  main  field.  All  the  curious  facts  of 
trance,  crystal-gazing,  automatic  writing,  etc.,  etc.,  as  well  as 
such  familiar  facts  as  conversion,  are  easily  explicable  on  this 
theory  of  isolated  elements  and  groups  of  elements  similar  to 
those  that  make  up  the  main  field  of  consciousness.  Hysteria  is 
explained  today  by  Freud  and  Janet  by  the  conception  of  such 
isolated  ideas  and  emotions,  unknown  to  the  main  stream  of  con- 
sciousness, but  having  a  disturbing  effect  upon  the  body  and  thus 
indirectly  upon  consciousness.  These  isolated  ideas  can  often 
be  tapped  in  the  hypnotic  state,  or  by  merely  directing  the  pa- 
tient's thoughts  in  the  right  direction;  when  they  are  brought  into 
relation  with  the  main  body  of  consciousness  they  become  subject 
to  the  control  of  the  will  and  lose  their  disturbing  power. 

If  space  permitted,  a  long  discursion  into  these  half  explored 
regions  would  do  much  to  reinforce  our  general  theory.  But 
we  can  only  pause  here  to  say  that  it  seems  sure  that  those  ele- 


40 

ments  of  reality  that  are  bound  together  into  the  field  or  stream 
of  consciousness  are  by  no  means  all  the  elements  of  reality  that 
correspond  to  the  total  sum  of  brain-events;  much  less  do  they 
include  those  elements  of  reality  which  correspond  to  bodily 
events  outside  of  the  brain.  This  organic  unity  which  we  call 
consciousness  consists  of  such  elements  of  our  total  brain-reality 
as  get  bound  together  by  an  interplay  of  causal  influences,  and 
therefore  permit  the  recovery  of  one  another's  past,  in  the  form 
of  memories,  from  any  point  within  the  total  field.  Whatever 
elements  have  not  got  closely  enough  linked  with  this  close- 
bound  aggregate  to  be  revivable  in  memory  from  within  that 
aggregate  play  only  a  spasmodic  part  in  the  personality.  Those 
events  we  cannot  remember.  But  there  is  no  sharp  line.  There 
are  all  degrees  of  separation  and  unity  among  the  elements  of  the 
brain-reality.  Two  series  of  disparate  activities  may  go  on  side 
by  side,  with  little  interplay  of  influence.  We  all  keep  our 
different  kinds  of  experience  and  our  different  moods  in  more  or 
less  separate  compartments.  We  all  are  taking  in  a  thousand 
impressions  daily  which  never  get  into  the  main  complex,  and 
have  no  effect  on  our  practice.  Dreams  are  a  good  illustration 
of  activities  that  go  on  within  our  total  brain-reality  pretty  com- 
pletely shut  off  from  the  main  stream  of  our  life,  and  not  usually 
revivable  in  memory  therefrom,  even  tho  vivid  enough  at  the 
time  and  attended  by  deep  emotion. 

Consciousness  is  a  common  pool  of  elements,  whereby  action 
can  be  affected  by  all  the  memories  recoverable  therein  as  well 
as  by  the  immediate  perception-data  that  appear  in  it.  It  is  a 
changing  unity  of  elements,  now  shrinking,  now  extending,  now 
losing  some  of  its  elements,  now  including  some  previously  lost; 
by  this  gain  and  loss  it  gains  and  loses  the  potentialities  of  memo- 
ries. But  it  never  includes  anywhere  near  all  the  elements  that 
correspond  to  the  total  sum  of  simultaneous  brain-events.  If 
motion  is  universal,  as  physics  teaches,  and  every  motion  pictures 
a  reality,  all  these  simultaneous  brain-events  are  actually 
'psychic'  events,  i.e.,  have  qualities;  mostly,  no  doubt,  of  a 
vague  'background'  nature,  but  sometimes  sensational,  some- 
times ideational,  sometimes  emotional.  Some  reflexes  seem  to 
be  permanently  split  off  from  consciousness,  unreachable  by  it, 
others  may  exist  in  separation  for  a  while  and  later  become  fused. 


41 

The  cerebellum-  and  spinal-ganglia-events  may  form  little  con- 
sciousnesses of  their  own.  It  seems  likely  at  any  rate  that  our 
main  consciousness  never  includes  all  simultaneous  brain-events, 
never  spreads,  so  to  speak,  over  even  the  whole  cortex. 

This  consciousness,  this  brain-process  (to  look  upon  it  from 
the  physical  side)  that  functions  as  a  unit,  is  the  most  intricate 
and  complex  mechanism  of  which  we  know.  It  is  the  very  acme 
and  highest  development  of  the  long  process  of  evolution,  which 
has  consisted  largely  in  an  increasing  complexification.  Here 
are  the  greatest  variety  of  motions  and  of  changes  of  motions 
within  a  small  compass  of  space  and  time  to  be  found  anywhere. 
The  richness  of  human  consciousness  is  presumably  pictured  by 
the  complexity  of  these  motions,  and  its  variety  by  their  ever- 
varying  character.  All  non-brain-matter  must  represent  a  far 
less  rich  and  varying  existence.  It  can  have  no  perception  of 
other  reality;  for  the  brain  alone,  owing  to  its  peculiar  structure 
and  its  relation  to  sense-organs,  allows  of  that  peculiar  reproduc- 
tion of  the  form  of  other  realities.  Every  element  of  the  world 
outside  of  those  unified  groups  or  fields  of  elements  which  we  call 
a  consciousness,  or  a  unitary  brain-process,  must  live  in  the  dark, 
as  it  were,  in  a  sort  of  revery,  unconscious  of  the  existence  of  any- 
thing else  than  itself.  It  can  probably  have  nothing  of  what 
we  call  pleasure  or  pain;  for,  tho  there  is  no  agreement  among 
psychologists  as  to  their  physical  concomitants,  they  probably, 
like  perception,  arise  only  wjien  the  complex  brain-situation 
arises.  Like  perception,  they  are  apparently  a  part  of  the 
mechanism  by  which  the  brain-in-itself  steers  us  and  adjusts  us 
to  the  world  in  which  we  live.  Emotions  are  made  up  of  sensa- 
tion-elements (=  perception-data)  plus  pleasure  and  pain  and 
incipient  motor  adjustments.  Memory  depends  upon  the 
structure  of  the  brain,  and  may  be  called  its  plasticity.  Thought, 
imagination,  conscious  will  —  all  the  important  varieties  of  con- 
scious life  —  are  clearly  dependent  upon  the  peculiar  organization 
of  brain-  (or  conscious-)  elements.  Intelligence  is  our  name  for 
that  organization  as  a  whole  as  related  to  the  world  to  which 
it  is  its  function  to  adjust  us.  None  of  these  complex  forms  of 
life  can  exist  where  that  organization  does  not  exist,  i.e.,  outside 
the  brain. 

How  then  can  we  picture  the  life  of  the  rest  of  reality?     Well, 


42 

there  must  be  a  good  deal  of  motion  in  the  brain  of  similar  type 
to  motions  outside  the  brain.  If  we  exclude  the  complex  processes 
which  symbolize  the  faculties  we  have  been  naming,  there  must 
be  underneath  and  between  them  a  good  deal  of  simple  motion — 
revolutions  of  electrons  about  their  atomic  centers,  heat-motions 
of  molecules,  etc.  These  have  no  memories,  however,  and  are 
very  likely,  in  their  qualitative  nature,  but  dim  feelings  which  it 
would  be  difficult  for  us  to  catch  and  describe  even  if  we  could 
hold  them  in  memory.  It  is  probable  that  we  shall  never  be  able 
in  this  direct  way  to  get  at  the  simple  elements  within  conscious- 
ness. If  we  could  catch  them  in  introspection  we  should  not 
know  which  physical  motions  represented  them.  Our  hope  lies 
rather  in  comparing  our  vivid  and  complex  types  of  conscious- 
ness, for  which  we  can  hope  to  discover  the  physical  equivalents. 
The  differences  in  these  physical  motion-complexes  must  repre- 
sent the  aspects  in  which  those  conscious-complexes  differ;  and  we 
might  thus  analyze  out  the  quality  which  each  component  of  a 
motion-complex  represents. 

There  is,  of  course,  a  good  deal  of  physical  activity  in  the  brain 
even  during  dreamless  sleep.  There  are  absent,  however,  sensa- 
tion-processes and  the  formation  of  memories.*  If  sensations 
intrude,  and  awaken  memories,  or  if  memories  are  roused  through 
some  internal  forces,  dreams  occur.  As  to  dreamless  sleep,  what- 
ever be  the  quality  of  the  brain-reality's  life,  there  can  be  no  mem- 
ory of  it  upon  awaking,  so  we  (i.e.  the  main  consciousness-com- 
plex) can  never  know  what  its  qualities  are.  If  we  dream,  the 
dreams,  having  little  relation  to  our  waking  life,  are  promptly 
forgotten  unless  gone  over  in  memory  after  awaking,  and  so 
linked  to  the  waking  life.  If  this  is  not  done,  they  will  yet  have 
left  traces  on  the  brain's  plastic  organization  (for  they  were  the 
sort  of  process  that  forms  memories),  and  under  suitable  circum- 
stances they  may  be  remembered,  as  in  another  dream,  or  even  in 
some  waking  revery  or  by  some  unusual  sensation ;  they  will  then 
have  for  us  a  curious  familiarity,  yet  seem  unrelated  to  our  waking 
life.  This  may  be  the  explanation  of  the  feeling  that  occasionally 
arises  of  having  had  an  experience  which  we  seem  to  remember, 
but  know  we  cannot  actually  have  had  in  this  life.  With  the 

*  I  am  indebted  to  Professor  Strong  for  calling  my  attention  sharply  to  this  aspect  of 
the  difference  in  the  situation. 


43 

proper  beliefs  at  hand,  a  man  may  thus  easily  persuade  himself 
that  he  has  had  a  vision  of  the  beyond. 

This  digression  may  help  to  clarify  our  ideas  about  conscious- 
ness. Only  certain  complex  brain-motions  represent  perceptions, 
ideas,  etc.  And  only  a  certain  organization  and  interplay  of 
these  motions  represents  a  togetherness  of  these  elements,  a  total 
consciousness.  These  elements  are  aggregated  into  consciousness 
in  the  degree  into  which  they  are  interwoven  and  mutually  arouse 
one  another. 

On  the  physical  side,  what  happens  when  a  thought  or  visual 
sensation  enters  a  sleeping  brain?  This  at  least  seems  apparent. 
The  motions  in  the  sleeping  brain  are  simpler  and  more  stable 
than  in  the  excited  brain.  In  the  latter,  *  currents '  are  aroused, 
i.e.,  motions  much  more  complex  than  the  atomic  and  sub-atomic 
motions  that  preexisted  there.  And  these  motion-complexes  are 
very  unstable,  rapidly  changing  in  form;  whereas  the  atomic 
and  sub-atomic  motions  are  pretty  uniform  and  stable.  The 
difference  between  the  non-existence  of  consciousness  (during 
dreamless  sleep)  and  its  existence  (upon  awaking,  or  in  dreams) 
would  seem  to  be  the  difference  between  the  simple,  comparatively 
stable  sub-atomic,  atomic,  and  molecular  motions,  and  the  com- 
plex and  rapidly  changing  nerve-current-motions;  between  com- 
paratively simple  and  changeless  sentient  life  and  complex, 
rapidly  changing  sentient  life. 

The  obstinate  reader  who  is  not  yet  converted  to  our  theory  will 
still  be  saying:  But  motions  are  motions  of  matter,  and  where  does 
the  matter  come  in  on  this  theory?  Now  the  concept  'matter' 
can  mean  but  one  of  two  things;  either  it  means  our  perception- 
data  (contrasted  with  our  'subjective,'  non-representative,  data); 
or  else  it  means  the  reality  that  makes  up  the  universe.  That 
reality  science  studies,  indirectly,  through  a  study  of  our  per- 
ceptions; but  it  can  tell  us  only  its  order,  not  its  substance.  That 
substance  is — well,  call  it,  if  you  please,  'sentience';  that  word 
connotes  its  homogeneitj^  with  our  consciousness.  Then  'matter' 
and  'sentience'  are  equivalent  terms.  So  motions  of  matter  are, 
in  other  words,  changes  in  sentient  life. 

It  is  interesting  to  note  that  scientists  themselves,  quite  with- 
out thought  of  metaphysics,  are  rapidly  discarding  the  concep- 
tion of  what  we.  may  call  the  materiality  of  matter.  They  are 


44 

telling  us  that  the  ultimate  units  of  matter  are  not  themselves 
' material.'  They  are  calling  them  'centers  of  force,'  'units  of 
force,'  etc.  But,  'force'  being  nothing  describable  but  motion 
and  the  potentiality  of  motion,  this  amounts  to  a  blank  confession 
of  ignorance.  What  the  stuff  that  makes  up  matter  is,  they 
simply  cannot  tell  us. 

A  few  years  ago  physicists  were  trying  to  discover  the  sub- 
stance underlying  matter,  trying  to  work  out  a  theory  of  matter- 
units  as  whirls  of  aether,  which  would  then  be  the  ultimate 
'matter/  of  which  what  we  call  'matter'  and  what  we  call  'aBther- 
waves'  would  be  different  types  of  motion,  whirls  and  waves. 
But  according  to  Professor  N.  R.  Campbell  of  Cambridge,  Eng- 
land, one  of  the  acutest  observers  and  critics  of  contemporary 
physical  theory,*  this  whole  type  of  thought  "is,  or  will  be 
within  the  next  few  years,  as  dead  as  the  conception  of  caloric 
or  phlogiston.  Mechanical  theories  of  electricity  have  gone  very 
much  out  of  fashion.  .  .  .  The  tendency  is  much  more  now  to  at- 
tempt to  produce  an  electrical  theory  of  mechanics;  that  is,  to 
take  the  fundamental  electrical  laws  and  theories  [laws  of  the  dis- 
tribution of  energy,  or  motion]  as  the  basis  of  science,  and  to 
deduce  everything  else,  including  mechanics,  as  special  cases  of 
them." 

That  is,  science  is  frankly  confessing  itself  to  be  merely  rela- 
tional knowledge,  and  giving  up  the  conception  of  a  substance, 
matter,  which  is  undergoing  these  space-time  changes.  When 
science  shall  finally  have  analyzed  all  physical  facts  into  their 
simplest  component  motions,  or  forces,  its  work  will  be  done. 
Only  through  the  indirect  route  of  metaphysics  can  we  arrive  at  a 
picture,  which  we  may  hope  some  day  to  fill  out  in  detail,  of  what 
things  really  are,  in  substance,  in  themselves. 

*  His  Modern  Electrical  Theory,  Cambridge,  1907,  is  still  the  best  general  survey  and  criti- 
cism of  modern  researches  into  the  ultimate  nature  of  electricity,  light,  heat,  etc.,  and  the 
ultimate  constitution  of  matter.  The  quotation  given  is  from  a  letter  to  the  writer  dated 
Jan.  26th,  1911. 


45 


VI.     INDIVIDUATION 

We  cannot  end  our  consideration  of  the  nature  of  things  in 
themselves,  the  reality  which  lies  '  behind/  is  revealed  in,  our  per- 
ceptions, without  noting  the  theory  advanced  by  Romanes, 
Fechner,  Paulsen,  Heymans,  and  others,  that  the  universe  of 
things-in-themselves  forms  a  single  vast  consciousness,  a  sort  of 
over-soul,  including  our  consciousnesses  and  all  the  rest  of  reality. 
Tho  reached  by  a  very  different  and  more  empirical  route,  the  out- 
come is  much  the  same  as  that  of  absolute  idealism.  It  is,  like 
that  theory,  a  sort  of  pantheism,  appealing  to  the  imagination, 
and  easily  making  alliance  with  religion.  It  has  indeed,  except  by 
a  blurring  of  outlines,  no  personal  comfort  to  give,  no  hope  to  offer 
that  things  are  better  than  they  seem,  or  will  be  better  than  em- 
pirical evidence  indicates  that  they  will  be.  But  it  is  an  alluring 
conception  in  itself,  and  it  readily  soaks  up  the  connotations  that 
hover  about  the  idea  of  God;  undoubtedly  it  owes  thereto  its  chief 
elements  of  tenacity. 

Apart  from  poetry  and  pious  hope,  the  argument  for  the  con- 
ception is  the  analogy  of  the  general  interplay  of  causal  influences 
throughout  the  universe  with  that  interplay  of  influence  in  the 
brain  which  represents  an  animal  consciousness.  As  the  brain 
is  an  organism,  so  may  the  earth  be  called  an  organism,  and  the 
solar  system,  the  stellar  system,  and  whatever  more  inclusive 
reality  there  may  be.  There  is  then  a  hierarchy  of  conscious 
fields,  the  smaller  fields  not  being  aware  of  the  rest  of  the  larger 
fields  of  which  they  are  a  part.  It  is  easy  for  a  poetic  mind  like 
Fechner's  to  make  this  conception  seem  very  plausible.  But  the 
actual  argument  reduces  to  the  analogy  between  the  organic 
unity  of  the  brain  and  that  of  the  larger  units. 

What  it  ignores,  however,  is  the  difference  between  the  unity 
which  the  brain-process  has  and  the  unity  which  exists  between 
the  brain-process  and  the  rest  of  the  world.  Why  does  our  con- 
sciousness stand  out  in  a  sort  of  isolation  from  the  rest  of  the 
world?  Simply  because  the  kind  of  unity  that  exists  between 
all  the  elements  of  reality  is  not  enough  of  a  unity  to  weld  those 
other  elements  into  one  consciousness  with  it.  The  organic 


46 

unity  of  the  brain-process  is  a  very  much  greater  unity  than  exists 
between  the  world-elements  in  general. 

Moreover,  it  is  not  difficult  to  see  that  the  effective  unity  of  the 
brain-process  is  created  largely  by  the  formation  of  memories — 
without  which  there  could  be  nothing  like  what  we  call  con- 
sciousness. The  earth,  and  the  universe,  have  no  mechanism  of 
memory — except  in  these  little  corners  that  we  call  brains. 
They  have  no  mechanism  of  perception,  knowledge,  emotion, 
thought,  or  will — that  is,  they  have  not  the  physical  mechanism 
that  represents,  on  our  theory,  what  we  experience,  in  their 
fullness  of  reality,  as  these  conscious  states.  In  what  sense  then 
could  we  call  the  sum  total  of  world-events  a  consciousness?  It 
would  be  very  different  indeed  from  what  we  do  empirically  call 
a  consciousness.  Nor  would  it  be  something  'higher'  than  con- 
sciousness. The  physical  events  outside  the  brain  are  simpler 
and  less  delicately  varying  than  those  within  the  brain;  if  our 
theory  is  correct,  the  life  out  there  must  be  a  less  developed,  less 
complex,  less  delicately  varying  life.  The  universe  is  superior 
in  size  to  the  brain;  but  these  little  bits  of  the  universe  are  her 
highest  developed  bits;  the  consciousness  of  animals,  and  finally 
that  of  man,  is  qualitatively  superior  to  the  life  of  the  rest  of  the 
universe. 

At  any  rate,  the  assumption  that  the  realities  pictured  by  the 
physical  motions  that  make  up  the  physical  earth,  or  the  universe, 
are  all  joined  together  in  one  field  of  consciousness,  as  the  ele- 
ments within  a  human  consciousness  are  joined,  is  a  flat  contra- 
diction of  the  actual  state  of  things.  Whatever  might  be  inferred 
to  be  the  case,  such  is  not  the  case.  The  observable  situation 
is  precisely  that  in  which  one  field  of  consciousness  is  separate 
from  other  fields,  and  separated  from  them  by  other  realities 
which  do  not  enter  into  either.  A  vast  consciousness  might 
conceivably  exist  somewhere,  but  it  would  not  be  these  realities; 
for  the  fact  of  separateness  is  as  sure  a  fact  for  these  realities 
as  the  fact  of  togetherness  between  the  elements  in  a  conscious- 
ness. If  the  togetherness  isn't  felt,  it  doesn't  exist;  for  it  is 
of  a  /e^-togetherness  that  we  are  speaking.  If  we  don't  feel 
ourselves  and  other  minds  as  one  conscious  whole,  then  we  are 
not  one  conscious  whole.  Sensations  and  memories  in  my  con- 
sciousness are  not  available 'for  yours,  except  through  the  indirect 


47 

processes  of  expression  and  perception.  We  are  doomed  to  be 
eternally  separate,  each  shut  up  to  his  own  data,  or  'states.' 

The  possibility  of  the  belief  in  the  larger  consciousness  rests 
on  an  incomplete  analysis  of  the  'self.'  The  world-consciousness 
is  thought  of  as  a  'self  or  'soul'  or  'Being'  that  'knows'  or 
'feels'  the  world-events,  as  'you'  and  'I'  'know'  our  conscious 
events.  Thus  our  conscious  events  exist  twice,  as  known  by  us, 
and  as  known  or  felt  by  the  world-soul.  Now  we  have  not  space 
to  undertake  an  analysis  of  the  'self  here.  We  may  only  say, 
rather  dogmatically,  that  'selves'  and  'souls'  and  'knowers' 
are  vanishing  with  'matter'  and  'substance'  and  the  other 
scholastic  entities.  The  'self  is  nothing  but  a  given  conscious- 
ness, the  sum  of  its  events,  or  a  special  set  of  its  events.  That 
there  is  any  other  '  self  or  '  ego'  or  '  soul '  is  without  evidence,  and 
is  a  belief  fast  dying  out.  Consciousness,  as  Professor  Strong 
says,  "exists  in  its  own  right."  And  if  this  is  so,  if  our  conscious- 
ness is  not  our  perception  of  certain  events,  which  the  world- 
soul  might  also  perceive,  and  perceive  in  a  relation  of  together- 
ness with  other  events;  if  our  consciousness  is  those  events,  and 
is  all  there  is  to  those  events;  then  any  events  existing  in  a  world- 
consciousness  would  be  other  events;  a  reduplication  of  these, 
perhaps,  with  the  relation  of  togetherness  with  other  events 
thrown  in,  but  not  these  events  themselves.  That  there  is  such 
a  reduplication  is  of  course  without  shadow  of  evidence. 

A  plausible  support  to  Fechner's  theory  might  be  found  in 
some  of  Dr.  Morton  Prince's  experiments.  I  am  not  aware  that 
any  of  the  pantheistic  panpsychists  have  adduced  this  sort  of 
evidence,  but  if  we  are  to  be  impartial  we  must  admit  that  it 
seems  at  first  sight  to  establish  the  reality  of  just  the  situation 
which  we  have  thrown  out  of  court  as  impossible — that  wherein 
a  larger  inclusive  consciousness  contains  in  a  relation  of  felt-to- 
getherness smaller  consciousnesses  which  yet  feel  themselves  to  be 
separate.  The  experiments  I  mean  are  those  in  dual  personality, 
wherein  personality  A  seems  to  be  aware  of  personality  B's  doings 
and  feelings,  while  B  remains  always  in  ignorance  of  A's.  A 
natural  statement  of  the  case  would  be  that  A  is  a  larger  person- 
ality, including  B ;  that  B  is  a  smaller  personality,  without  knowl- 
edge of  that  part  of  A  beyond  the  boundaries  of  B;  that  these  two 
personalities  coexist.  Now  it  seems  to  me  that  the  first  two  of 


48 

these  statements  describe  the  facts  as  given,  but  that  the  third 
is  an  illegitimate  inference.  It  would  be  (if  not  at  bottom  a  self- 
contradictory  statement)  one  possible  explanation.  Another 
would  be  in  terms  not  of  coexisting  but  of  alternating  personali- 
ties. When  I  talk  with  B,  a  certain  part  of  the  total  field  which 
we  may  call  X  has  been  cut  off;  the  field  has  shrunk;  the  mem- 
ories lying  within  the  X  portion  are  not  available.  The  cause  will 
no  doubt  be  presently  learned,  in  physical  terms;  the  result  is 
that  the  potential  memories  and  the  habits  stored  in  the  B  por- 
tion of  the  total  field  (or  brain-process)  interwork  with  one  an- 
other, but  without  those  other  habits,  memories,  elements  of  char- 
acter, stored  in  the  X  portion.  When  I  talk  with  A,  however, 
the  split  has  ceased.  I  have  the  whole  field,  with  all  the  mem- 
ories available  of  both  the  B  and  the  X  portions.  Such  cases  of 
contracting  and  enlarging  personality  are  exceedingly  common, 
and  it  is  in  such  terms  that  we  should  explain,  no  doubt,  many  of 
our  changes  of  mood  and  disposition.  The  peculiarity  of  the 
pathological  cases  is  that  in  them  the  incoming  and  outgoing 
nerve-currents  (or  at  least  those  through  which  the  observer 
holds  communication  with  the  patient)  after  the  shift  of  personal- 
ity, reach  and  come  from  another  region  of  the  brain.  There  has 
been  a  switch  of  the  currents,  and  that  makes  the  sense  of  a  dual 
personality.  The  centers  now  directly  communicated  with  have 
desires  and  feelings  affiliated  with  them  other  than  those  over  in 
the  B  portion,  which  are  nevertheless  within  communication.  In 
other  words,  two  sets  of  memory  images  and  associations  have 
been  developed;  when  one  set  is  reached  by  the  observer  it  is  in 
communication  with  the  other  set  but  is  the  dominant  set  and 
never  lets  the  other  set  get  control;  when  the  second  set  is  com- 
municated with,  the  first  set  is  shut  off  and  ineffective. 

This  hastily  sketched  explanation  may  not  hold.  It  is  given 
here  simply  as  showing  the  possibility  of  other  explanations  of 
the  multiple  personality  cases  than  that  which  would  make  in 
favor  of  the  Fechnerian  hypothesis.  The  direct  evidence  against 
that  hypothesis,  in  the  fact  that  we  actually  find  ourselves  sepa- 
rate— so  far  as  the  relation  which  constitutes  a  consciousness  is 
concerned — and  in  the  study  of  the  nature  of  the  brain-processes 
that  represent  a  consciousness  and  failure  to  find  similar  processes 
and  a  similar  organic  unity  elsewhere,  seems  conclusive. 


49 

Leibniz  went  to  the  other  extreme,  and  called  every  'monad' 
a  soul.  In  terms  of  modern  science,  we  might  hold  every  electron 
or  prime-atom  a  mind.  But  there  is  nothing  to  indicate  that 
there  is  an  arch-atom  in  our  brains  which  carries  the  human  con- 
sciousness in  it.  On  the  contrary,  the  empirical  concomitance 
between  different  parts  of  the  cortex  and  different  elements  of 
consciousness,  and  the  striking  parallelism  between  the  laws  of 
consciousness  and  the  laws  that  hold  between  different  elements 
of  an  extended  brain-process,  point  to  our  identification  of  the 
human  consciousness  with  such  an  extended  and  organically 
united  brain-process.  Since  no  such  organic  union  exists  outside 
the  brain  we  cannot  suppose  that  there  exists  anywhere  else  such 
an  organic  whole  as  a  consciousness.  The  outer  reality  is  prob- 
ably better  described,  in  Clifford's  language,  as  'mind-dust,'  or  in 
Strong's,  as  '  infra-experiences.'  Schopenhauer's  description  of 
it  as  'will'  seems  rather  arbitrary,  even  when  we  admit  that  we 
cannot  mean  what  we  usually  call  will,  with  its  conceptual  ac- 
companiments and  prevision.  Effort,  striving,  may  form  a  con- 
siderable element  in  the  life  about  us;  but  there  seems  no  good 
reason  for  excluding  qualities  of  other  types.  For  all  we  know, 
the  qualities  of  things  may  be  such  familiar  ones  as  we  should  call 
color,  heat,  etc.  Or  all  their  qualities  may  be  such  as  we  have  no 
names  for.  We  cannot  know  at  present. 

Tho  not  aggregated  into  consciousnesses,  the  realities  that 
make  up  the  universe  exist  together  in  another  sense.  They  are 
together  in  what  we  call  space,  and  succeed  one  another  in  what 
we  call  time.  Not,  we  may  hasten  to  add,  in  the  space  which  is 
a  quality  of  our  visual  data,  or  the  time  which  is  a  quality  of  our 
present  data.  Time  and  space  in  this  sense  are  qualities  of  our 
consciousness,  data  present  in  our  fields,  and  not  that  order  in 
which  existences  stand  related  to  one  another.  Space  and  time 
in  the  latter  sense  never  enter  within  experience.  The  order  of 
existences  is  a  fact  about  those  existences,  not  a  quality  of  them. 
The  bit  of  space  that  we  have  as  a  perception-datum  can  be  ana- 
lyzed into  qualities  existing  in  our  field  of  data,  or  consciousness; 
it  represents  the  real  order  in  which  those  realities  exist  which 
our  perception-data  represent,  but  it  is  not  that  real  order.  It  is 
of  course  exactly  so  with  time;  the  sense  of  duration  that  we  feel 
now  is  a  quality  of  our  experience,  representative  of  a  real  succes- 


50 

sion  of  experiences,  but  not  identical  with  the  fact  of  that  succes- 
sion. Things  really  exist  in  a  definite  order,  which  we  may  call 
the  space-time  order.  Causal  influences  find  their  way  about  in 
certain  definite  ways  only  in  this  order;  and  what  the  quality  of  an 
existence  is  depends  partly  upon  its  place  in  that  order.  When  we 
move  we  actually  change  our  place  in  this  order.  Our  theory 
does  not  do  away  with  this  order.  Each  real  event  takes  place  in 
its  particular  place  in  time  and  space,  as  physical  science  shows  us. 
But  the  problem  of  individuation  arises  only  in  the  case,  it  would 
seem,  of  animal  brains.  Here,  owing  to  the  peculiar  mechanism 
developed,  a  set  of  memories  becomes  available  from  any  part  of  a 
total  process,  and  what  we  call  a  consciousness  appears.  It  is  to 
be  hoped  that  Professor  Strong,  in  the  book  on  which  he  is  now 
engaged,  The  Origin  of  Consciousness,  will  throw  further  light  on 
these  matters. 

VITA 

(In  compliance  with  the  requirements  for  Doctors'  dissertations.) 

Durant  Drake  was  born  at  Hartford,  Connecticut,  Dec.  18,  1878. 
He  attended  Harvard  University  1896-1900  and  1901-3;  Columbia 
University  1910-11.  Previous  degrees:  A.B.  Harvard  1900,  A.M. 
Harvard  1904. 


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